Shielded Under the Raptor's Wings
by lord Martiya
Summary: During the Earth-Minbari War the heavy cruiser Medea stumbled on an unexpected and improbable help, someone that the Minbari took care of provoking in an act they would rue.
1. The Cruise of Medea

The idea for this story came to me while reading _A Thin Veneer_. The story is good, but I felt that a few parts of it were off (the first thing that comes to mind is how he completely missed the Federation-Romulan Alliance implied in _The Last Frontier_ and blatantly demonstrated by ambassador Nanclus in _The Undiscovered Country_). At first I wanted to criticize him, but then I wondered why I didn't write my version if I was that good, and started writing. I hope I'm good enough for this.  
lord Martiya

**Prologue part 1: The Cruise of ****_Medea_**

August 12 2247, Earthdome  
"How?"  
It wasn't an unusual question for Lucio Panaccio. As the commander of EAS _Medea_, one of the ships assigned to raid the Minbari lines, he was often asked how the hell did he survive. Granted, it wasn't even half of the times Sheridan had been asked about the _Black Star_ alone (never mind the rest of what Starkiller had pulled), but it still was pretty often. This time, however, it was big, both for the asker being the Chief of Staff, general Lefcourt, and because of what he had done.  
"How did I found those people? It was sheer luck." he admitted. "That, and the Minbari are better than Jankowski at pissing off people. Here how it happened."

Two months earlier, near Myoto

Myoto was unusually well-placed for the needs of the Earth Alliance in the Minbari War. Situated near Minbari territory and away from the main body of Earth space, it was the ideal base for hitting ships in the Minbari Federation itself. Of course, that was true only as long as the Minbari didn't know where the raiders came from. And when they finally discovered Myoto had not been evacuated, the Warrior Caste had been beyond pissed.  
"Five Royals and seven Lanterns?! What have we done to deserve this?!" cried Albert Blazic, first officer of _Medea_, when the sensor officer reported what the Minbari had sent to invade the system.  
"Apart raiding their supplies with our base placed so near their core worlds?" Panaccio replied.  
"They never complained before."  
"Because they didn't expect us to be _that_ crazy. Plus, someone forgot about the beacon we had here. Bet we pissed off even Bremmar... Mr Boothroyd, let's run."  
_Medea_ entered the local jump gate with the last ship evacuation ships who had been able to leave. And discovered that the operation had been planned by The Shay'Alyt himself.  
"Contact: four Deeps."  
"Of course..." was Panaccio's comment.  
The _Medea_ wasn't like the ships of the same class that fought in the Dilgar War. Built as an _Hyperion_ Delta, the ship could count from the beginning on the fruits of the war, namely improved fusion reactors, the same armour once used on the infamous _Sekhmet_-class testbed cruisers (the facilities producing it being seized intact and quickly dismantled and brought into Earth space), and reverse-enginereed ion drives and pulse cannons, and the refit of the previous year had replaced the interceptors with newer models and the plasma cannons and most pulse cannons with five new model railguns, much more effective than energy weapons when used against Minbari crystalline armor. It had enough firepower to kill even the mighty _Shargotti_ warcruisers... And it mattered very little due the still unbroken Minbari stealth. With surprise and one on one, _Medea_ could shoot out of the skies the smaller Minbari ship classes, but against four _alert_ Tigara attack cruisers (reporting name: Deep) all she could do was run, and hope they were too busy checking the civilian vessels for weapons to see her in hyperspace.  
"Contact correction: it's two Deeps, one with Wind Sword ID, one Altum and one French. And they're intercepting."  
While the presence of the _Leshat_ (reporting name: French) and the _Teshlan_ (Altum) wasn't too bad, as the _Leshat_ would not engage an _Hyperion_ and the neutron lasers of the _Teshlan_ had more problems in hyperspace than the slugs of the railguns, the _Tigara_ with Wind Sword ID was: now that they had _Medea_ as excuse, they would try and shoot down the other civilian vessels, even with the rest of the force trying to follow their rules of engagement.  
"All ships, course to Solta Gan." Panaccio ordered. "They'll kill us, but if we make it the garrison will bring the civilians to safety, for now. Mr Garian, prepare a mine and a couple duds for our pursuers. Launch on my mark."  
Panaccio waited for when the Minbari ships (more visible in hyperspace) were in the right position, then dropped the mines, hoping to score a kill thanks to the strange nature of hyperspace hiding the actual one and then amplificating the explosion. Normally the decoys wouldn't have been necessary, but the _Leshat_'s superior sensors could detect them and direct the point defense fire. And its sheer volume of fire shot down one of the decoys very quickly, prompting Panaccio to detonate the mine early.  
"Shockwave incoming." was the bored warning coming from the sensor station.  
The cruiser and the score of civilian vessels it was defending were hit _hard_ by the shockwave, sending them off-course.  
"Report!"  
"Sensors on line."  
"Weapons on line!"  
"_Reactor on line!"_  
"Hull integrity: 100%!"  
"Good." Panaccio stated. "Hasegawa, what happened?"  
"The fusion mine initiated near an anomalous gravitational current, amplificating the shockwave in our direction." lieutenant Hasegawa stated from her sensor station. "Bad news is that we're going _somewhere_, and I've no idea on how to stop. Good news is that all civvies are following and there's no Minbari around_."_  
"Let's hope we'll be able to stop..."

It took them four days, but the gravitational current stopped pulling the Earth ships, and they were able to lock on a nearby hyperspace beacon.  
"Does the beacon say the name of the place?" Panaccio asked.  
"Neutral World of Canchika. They specify Neutral World." the first officer announced. "The beacon signal follows both Centauri and Minbari standards."  
"Hail Canchika. Announce our arrival and request sanctuary for the civilians and a chance to trade."  
A few minutes later, the convoy passed the Canchika system jumpgate, being welcomed by an unknown vessel.  
"Unknown vessel estimated size: over five million tonnes. Power comsumption indicates twice our firepower. They've locked on us."

_Author notes_

Checked with a map from the _B5 Wars_ game and the _Galactic Guide_ of the RPG: Myoto colony is actually placed at spitting distance from _Minbar itself_. The Minbari probably thought the colony had been long evacuated, and when they bothered to check they were obviously furious, even if Earthforce never actually located Minbar.

The reporting names I've assigned Minbari ships are fish themed, with variants of the _Sharlin_ hullform based on angelfish species (the Royals mentioned here are in fact the basic _Sharlin_) and the _Tinashi_ on sharks (the Lanterns are _Esharan_, anti-fighter variant of the _Tinashi_). The whole list can be found in the scraps of my Deviantart profile at lordmartiyaDOTdeviantartDOTc om.


	2. Improbable Allies

This chapter had an unexpected difficulty. Given I'm basing the Romulans here on Diane Duane's version (please read the _Rihannsu_ novels, or any of her novels), I had an unexpected problem: they're fixated with proper names, and I had to search the proper variant of the word 'Rihan' (the name they give to themselves) _every single time_ they spoke about themselves. That, and I just _had_ to try and imitate Diane Duane (don't cry for me, I deserve the headache). Anyway, this is the second part of the prologue. Next chapter we'll get to the action.  
by lord Martiya

**Prologue part 2: Improbable allies**

Lucio Panaccio was not happy. He was responsible for defending a squadron of civilian ships, to try and save them from the Wind Swords he had got both the civilians and his own ship stranded far enough he didn't even know where, and he had just encountered an unknown vessel with at least twice his firepower. At least they were hailing him...  
"_This is the battleship _Exploding Star_, of the Rihannsu Star Empire. Earth Alliance vessel, explain your presence in this part of the galaxy."_  
That explained where he was. And he didn't like it one bit: the Rihannsu were grammar nazis (at least regarding their name) with _heavy_ firepower whose small Raptor Ships (so called as they were painted to resemble birds of prey), equipped with a stealth technology that put the Minbari one to shame and obscenely powerful plasma weapons, had appeared at random intervals for about fifty years before abruptly disappearing just before the Dilgar War. And in the period they had interfered in the local affairs in more than one occasion, showing hostility to Earth Alliance for a while (a case of mistaken identity, they said), possibly helping the Narn into becoming indipendent (there had been a lot of Raptor ship sightings near Narn in the months before the Night of Bleeding Stars, and the Narn rebels had been armed with too many Centauri guns for them being all stolen) and serving as one of the best deterrents against Dilgar expansion after their invasion of Alaca (a Raptor Ship appearing over Alaca, destroying their newly completed space station and then disappearing had quite an effect, at least until the sightings stopped). And now he had encountered one of their battleships, that could probably obliterate his cruiser even without her plasma weapon.  
"This is Lucio Panaccio, captain of the Earth Alliance cruiser _Medea_. I ask sanctuary for the civilian ships of this convoy." he replied, trying to save at least the civilians. "We are currently at war with a technologically superior race called the Minbari, who have sworn to exterminate all humans.  
"_The Minbari? They are isolationist. Your story is rather improbable. Can you prove i-"_  
"Jump points forming. It's those Minbari." Hasegawa called from the sensor station.  
True to the announcement, two _Tigara_-class attack cruisers, one _Teshlan_-class long range cruiser and one _Leshat_-class long range scout left hyperspace. But where the _Leshat_, the _Teshlan_ and one of the _Tigaras_ stopped and started scanning, the Wind Sword _Tigara_ powered her weapons and approached the convoy.  
"Power all weapons, and put us between the bonehead and the civvies!" Panaccio ordered.  
"_Minbari vessels, stand down and identify yourselves."_ a woman's voice came from the Rihan vessel. _"You too, _Medea_. Canchika is neutral space protected by both the Rihanh and the Klivam, and I will not tolerate this nonsense."_  
At the same time of the warning, _Exploding Star_ moved between the Minbari and the Earth Alliance convoy, locking on both _Medea_ and the attack cruiser.  
"Hasegawa, how is _Exploding Star_'s defense?" Panaccio asked.  
"Heavy armor of unknown strength and thickness and a low-powered shield." she replied.  
"How much powerful?"  
"Enough to deviate uncoherent particles at high speed. And there are various devices on the hull, similar to the shield projector but bigger."  
"All weapon power to the E-web. Let's enjoy the show."  
"Getting a message from the Wind Swords to the Rihannsu." Blazic announced. "They say they're in a holy war and to not get involved."  
"And the other Minbari?"  
"They want to know the situation first."  
"Wind Swords fir-Holy shit!"  
The _Tigara_ had opened fire on _Exploding Star_ with all weapons, only to have all beams stopped with no damage by the newly activated shields of the Rihan vessel activating. At the same time, _Exploding Star_ hit the _Tigara_ with a luminescent globe that exploded on contact, smashing its victim like an eggshell hit by a sledgehammer.  
"So that's their famous plasma weapon..." Panaccio commented, more than a little scared.  
"Negative: it was an antimatter-based projectile. Estimated yield: fifteen megatons." Hasegawa stated, her voice trembling in surprise and fear. Then came the scary announce: "_Exploding Star_ is powering up."  
"_Minbari vessels, I must express my gratitude to you for helping me in the difficult decision of taking the Earth vessels under my Empire's protection. As a thanking gift, I will allow you ten minutes to vacate this system and return home before considering your continued presence an act of war."_ announced the woman from _Exploding Star_, causing the Minbari to open a jump point and run.  
"_Her_ empire?" Geoffrey Boothroyd, the helmsman, wondered out loud.  
"That's what I heard too..." Panaccio replied. "Those imbeciles attacked the Rihanssu Empress..."  
"Captain, the empress wish to meet you on her ship." Blazic announced. "Now, if possible."  
"Tell her I'm coming."

Arrived on _Exploding Star_ (translation from the original Rihan name _Morlalasi Stelam_), Panaccio was not surprised to discover it had artificial gravity, or that he had been given a 'honor guard' of vampiric-looking soldiers. What surprised him was that the Empress (a diminutive alien woman with elven ears, looking in her fifties and wearing a military uniform), guarded by three other 'vampires' and another 'elven' woman, received him in a very spartan office.  
After giving him permission to sit, the Empress presented herself as Ael and demanded to know what had happened to cause the war.  
"We have known of the Minbari for years, but never tried to contact them after the first approaches were rebuffed." Panaccio started. "Then, after the Dilgar War, Earthforce command started being interested in the Minbari, I didn't need to know why. For a while it was done nothing, as the Alliance was too busy rebuilding and upgrading the fleet. Then, five years ago, we started checking the uncharted systems between Earth space and the known Minbari settlements. We al had orders to avoid any first contact situation unless strictly necessary, and about two years ago one of our exploratory squadrons was sent to the uncharted system Gamma Omega, near Centauri space. Given the orders and the location, the mission was considered foolproof, so the high command gave him to Michael Jankowski, who was a known fool."  
"Why was that?" Ael asked.  
"He was good with numbers but was too arrogant and unable to form a working relationship with anyone, so he had been given an administrative job. Then he married the daughter of an high government officer, who got him command of a frigate before the Dilgar War. He screwed up big time, and warmaster Jha'dur saw us coming and ran. We destroyed her fleet at Second Markab and nearly killed her, so his father in law was able to save his neck, but Jha'dur's managed to kill billions of civilians and nearly cost us the war before we could nail her at Balos.  
"With his skills and help from his father in law, Jankowki managed to rise the ranks and get a new command, so Earthforce gave him that mission to justify his promotion to commodore and reassignment to a space station, where he'd be useful."  
"And what happened instead?"  
"Gamma Omega was a Minbari system, they call it Drala Toth. Worse, Jankowki's task group had left hyperspace near two Minbari cruisers, and decided to take a look. The Minbari didn't like that and activated their stealth, and started scanning to see who the intruders were. Then, as tradition for the Minbari Warrior Caste, they opened all gunports in sign of peace and respect. At that point Jankowki realized he had screwed up and tried to run, but the Minbari scans had jammed his jump drives. And he opened fire, damaging their ships and hitting their scanners. At that point he ran, but his fire had killed Dukhat, their political and religious leader.  
"Since then we've been at war. Our ships can destroy theirs, we can build ships faster than them, and we use better tactics, but with their stealth we can't hit them at anything but point blank range, and their weapons have superior range.  
"At the very start they just charged at us and fired. Then we had the two only actual victories so far: their flagship and her support vessels were raiding our homeworld's system when the _Lexington_ improvised an ambush with nuclear weapons and blew them up with their supreme commander, and their fleet en route for Beta Durani was lost when we deactivated the beacon as they passed near a black hole.  
"After that they got a new military leader, Bramin or something like that. Much more prudent, smart and methodical, enough that we can slow them by raiding their supply lines and hitting the depots, but if we fight an actual battle with them he counters everything we try, and he's forcing his warriors to smarten up. Some, mainly the Wind Swords and the Blood Knives, still charge head first and die a stupid death, but there's less and less of those..."  
"I see..." she stated. "I don't know if we can help. The last years have been troubling, and my Empire is on the verge of a war. That, and we could lose an ally due some imbeciles. What I can say is that we'll accept refugees. Anything else will have to wait. Assuming, of course, that you let Xiomek check your story."  
One of the 'vampires', who wore a white uniform with no helmet instead of the purple with helmet of the other two, stepped forward.  
"He's a judiciary telepath, obliged, by law and conditioning for the job, to only check if your story is true and wipe the memories of what he learned after testifying." she explained.  
Given the desperate situation of Earth, Panaccio let the telepath check, after which the empress ordered the starship _Blacklight_ (part of _Exploding Star_'s invisible escort) to lead the civilian convoy to the planet Artaleirh (location of major shipyards) for repairs, while _Medea_ was invited to follow the empress to the planet Khitomer.

"Why the hell she wants us at a peace conference?" Blazic asked after Panaccio returned.  
"Influence." Panaccio replied. "This ally of her empire, called the United Federation of Planets, is relatively peaceful, and many of their politicians expect the Rihannsu to join soon and want to mothball the fleet to detout the money in a fool's errand, she says. And as the Rihannsu won't like being taken for granted, they'd kill their alliance. Our presence and appeal for help should give their navy enough political clout to save their budget and strength, at least for the moment."  
"And if it fails?"  
"Then we try and convince them to give us sensors that can see the Minbari and their strange stardrive, and return home."  
"What stardrive? We're in hyperspace."  
"It's called a warp drive. Somehow it allows a ship to travel faster than light while remaining in real space."  
"Then what they even use hyperspace for?!"  
"Warp drives are apparently energy intensive. Given that antimatter reactors are restricted to the military and fusion reactors that are both powerful enough for high warp speeds and compact enough for a starship are rare outside the Rihannsu military, most civilian warp ships can't go faster than about forty times lightspeed. It's over a month from Earth to Proxima."  
"And with a jump drive you only need to charge it twice, and with jumpgates not even that... I'll believe it when I'll see it."  
"I understand. Now, I need some advice."  
"On what?"  
"It would be classified, but as soon as we arrive on Khitomer the cat will be out of the bag. I'd like to break gently to the crew that there are various planets where humans have developed, and that the Federation's capital is apparently a copy of our Earth."  
"Wait, what?"  
"During the first explorations of space we discovered a planet that had housed a human civilization, with a similar technological level to ours, before someone pulled a Mitoc on it and scoured its moon with a plague that makes Deathwalker look a beginner.  
"The ship we copied the Interceptors and the E-web from was a testbed vessel from a human civilization at war with an unknown enemy.  
"You remember the dreadnought _Eurystheus_, returned crippled and triumphant from a scuffle with a _Sharlin_? The _Sharlin_ was destroyed by an advanced alien weapon built by enemies of the Minbari protecting their _human_ descendants. Humans who have lost knowledge of their ancestors' technology, so we have no idea on how to reproduce the thing or sick it on some Minbari world."  
"I... I didn't-"  
"And that's why it was kept classified: it's really shocking, and will have imprevedible effects on our society. Only ship commanders and above know, and are authorized to tell the crew if they happen to stumble on them. There's just one problem: I have no idea _how_."

At Khitomer things were complicated: there had been a conspiracy between elements of the Federation, Klingon and Rihan governements and militaries to try and cause a war between the Federation-Rihan alliance and the Klingon Empire, a conspiracy that had already claimed the life of the Klingon high chanchellor Gorkon (now succeeded by his daughter Azetbur) and had nearly claimed the one of Federation president Ra-ghoaratreii. After the Rihan ambassador was punished (tried by the empress and sentenced to death by disintegration. In an act of clemency, the court changed it to exile in the Klingon Empire. His expression told Panaccio that the former ambassador would have preferred disintegration), the conference actually succeeded, but during the following talks some Federation politicians talked against helping Earth Alliance, claiming it violated a Prime Directive (some others and all Starfleet officers disagreed, but most of the Federation delegation agreed) and were talking about the mothballing of Starfleet.  
Then a Klingon officer announced they had lost contact with Nimbus III, giving ammo to the Starfleet officers.  
"What is Nimbus III?" Panaccio asked the empress' bodyguard N'Alae.  
"A joint Rihan-Federation-Klingon colony." she replied. "It was called the Planet of Galactic Peace, as it was founded to foster better relations between our states, but it almost failed. And even now it could fail. Anyway, attacking it is an act of war against all three governments."  
"We are receiving a transmission on tachion signals from Nimbus III." the Klingon officer announced as a screen with an alien symbol was lowered from the roof. "We're putting it on."  
"How many people on that planet?" Panaccio asked.  
"About seven millions after the second wave of colonists... Why?" N'Alae replied.  
"They're all dead: that's the symbol of the Wind Swords, the most militant of the Minbari Warrior Clans."  
"You kidding?"  
"I wish I was..."  
The Wind Sword symbol disappeared from the screen, and was replaced with the image of a destroyed space station in orbit to a rocky planet.  
"_We are the Wind Swords, greatest clan of the Minbari Warrior Caste."_ the message announced. _"We are in a holy war with the Earth Alliance, whose people dared to murder Dukhat, Chosen One of the Minbari Federation. All humans shall die, for this. The Rihani dared to house them here, and fired on one of our ships pursuing their warships. _This_ is the revenge of the Minbari."_  
One moment later the visual showed a dozen vessels taking place over the planet and opening fire. The beams illuminated the atmosphere as soon as they hit it, and continued until they hit the surface, causing an even stronger light as everyone looked in horror.  
"_This was our revenge. The space station is destroyed. The settlements are destroyed, and no human nor Rihani is still living on the planet of Nimbus III. Do not interfere again, for the next time we shall not be so mercyful."_  
"MERCYFUL?!" Ael cried. "I'll show them mercy! As soon as the survivors are resc-"  
"There are no survivors." Panaccio announced. "They used antimatter converters. Their beams convert matter into antimatter. That is what the Minbari will use on our homeworld when we'll run out of ships."  
"Not on my watch." Chanchellor Azetbur declared. "The Klingon Empire is now at war with the Minbari Federation. Who is with us?"

Present time, Earth.  
"As you know, sir, Rihannsu, Federation and Klingon are now at war with the Minbari, and sneaked here with me to fight and help us to become a better match for the Minbari." Panaccio said.  
"And the Minbari didn't see them arriving?" Lefcourt asked.  
"There's a stable wormhole that leads from Rihan space to just antispinward from Chi Draconis and rimward of Ch'lon, away enough that the Ch'lonas didn't even know its existance."  
"Good for them." Lefcourt commented, knowing how aggressive the Ch'lonas were. "Let's just hope we'll have enough time to prepare and this people is good as they say..."

Minbari space, system Chi Draconis (EA designation).  
Earthforce knew this system as Valen's Fortress, from the signal of the local hyperspace beacon, and considered it the gate for Minbar. But they had never dared to try and raid it for information or to attack the massive shipyards in the system, as the sheer number of vessels always present there made such a proposition suicidal.  
Of course the proposition was less dangerous when the raider had a cloaking device, like the Rihan _Vas'kalabam_-class cruiser _Memenda_ currently in orbit of Chi Draconis VII. After scanning the planet, the cruiser sent a message through subspace.  
"_Mh'riov Liviana Charvanek, ohrien ih'Shiar hiyll _Memenda_, Vriha'ri Ael'ri'ih u'htianasivha ehrevfevha. Ahr'Chi Draconis Minbarha."_  
After the offense of communicating the identity of the planet from its own orbit, _Memenda_ left it for the lesser of the system's twin stars, waiting for the right moment to take revenge for the Rihanh people. And restore her honour.

_Author notes_

I wrote the Rihannsu (A.K.A. the Romulans) as having had explored the space near Earth Alliance and the other B5 powers because they would check for possible resources or threats. Why they stopped... Well, they had _good_ reasons.

The presence of a jumpgate network for civilian ships in the Alpha/Beta Quadrant area was suggested to me by the convoy battle in the DS9 episode _Rules of Engagement_, that, being not at warp speed, makes very little sense if all the vessels had warp drive. But if we insert a jump gate network and restricted access to antimatter (the most powerful and volatile explosive known) the scene makes sense, as the convoy would have included a number of non-warp ships and would have been attacked between two jumpgates. Note:

Mitoc is a world destroyed by the Dilgar during the war. To deny it to the advancing Earthforce, the Dilgar hit it with mass drivers, then with its own defensive nukes to wreck the ecosystem, had their defensive satellites fire another dosing of nukes on it, and then had the satellites and a battlestation crash on the landmasses. Finally they gave it the coup de grace with biological weapons designed to kill any kind of evolved life. It's _still_ better than what happened to that planet Panaccio is speaking of.

Isail is mentioned in the _Babylon 5_ RPG material, and is an ancient Shadow base. The Vorlon made the Isaili incompatible with Shadow technology (that's why they put off-worlders in the automated defense system of their homeworld), and the Centauri, while knowing of the system, never invaded, officially because the Isaili are sickly-looking and wouldn't be good slaves. The Minbari, being Minbari, think that it was a defensive system that had survived the Vorlon scourging the planet and nobody would willingly study Shadowtech, so they never bothered to check again.

The Ch'lonas are one of Earth Alliance's eternal annoyances, placed between Earth and Minbari space. They tend to attack everything and everyone (including each other while they're attacking their enemies), and the only reason they're still alive and indipendent is that Earth prefers to swat their attempted raids, the Koulani (the other eternal annoyance of Earth Alliance) are smart enough to realize how much it would cost to keep them conquered, the Centauri once conquered them but saw they weren't worth the cost, and they never encountered the Minbari.


	3. Changing Balance

First actual chapter. Mostly descriptive, but with some goods in it.  
by lord Martiya

**01:****Changing Balance**

For the first time since the start of the war, William Morgan Clark was in a good mood. A former intelligence analyst who had entered politics, he wasn't liked in the intelligence community due his involvment in the loss of the EAS _Persephone_ at Tirrith, and his past as a spook didn't exactly made him adored by Earthforce when he was appointed as secretary of defense. On the other hand his no-nonsense attiture, his ability to stop further cuts to the defense budget and procure increased fundings for the Long Range Navy project had won him a great measure of respect, that only increased when Jankowski returned from his encounter with the Minbari and he, minutes before being informed of the Minbari retaliation against Jericho and Vega, made public the Earthforce captain had violated the orders he had been given _specifically to avoid shootouts and diplomatic incidents_.  
In his job as defense secretary, Morgan had overseen the desperate efforts to try and oppose the Minbari, but nothing had been able to stop them-not the newer nuclear devices, not the Centauri-derived weapons, not the hyperspace inhibitor (why the hell did his predecessors forgot the particular piece of technology it had been reverse-engineered from?!), not the new ships and satellites- only to slow them, and gain time for a last desperate defense and Operation Chryses. Now, finally, he had decisive results to show the president, and he was about to do just that.  
"Madam president, we may win this war." he stated.  
"I take their technology is much superior." president Elizabeth Levy replied, still unwilling to commit.  
"It's a little more complicated than that, but, where it counts, it is."  
"Explain."  
"According to R&D, the technology of the visitors is on a similar level to the most advanced local races in most fields. Their shields are superior to anything the Abbai have ever dreamed, and their stealth technology is greatly superior to the Minbari's, but outside their respective fields of excellence their other technologies are on a similar level to what can be found around here. The part that counts are those discoveries that we lack altogether, and how they combine with the rest."  
"Elaborate."  
"There's their warp drive, something of which we have had the basic theorical knowledge for almost three centuries. The warp drive is based on the Alcubierre Drive Theory published in 1994, but we failed to develope the technologies to actually implement it. The other Earth, on the other hand, developed such technologies, and seventy years later they had a working warp drive. It could only reach lightspeed, but they had it, and the most recent models are over one thousand times faster.  
"Their energy weapons are similar. On a basic level, phasers and disruptors are nothing more than particle weapons, not much different from our owns. But there's an added component that makes them more powerful against shields and cause a solid target to disintegrate."  
"It does what?!"  
"Technically the matter is still there, only decayed in neutrinos. But as neutrinos don't interact with most other matter, the end result is that the target is disintegrated."  
"And they're sharing these technologies with us?"  
"Not exactly. Thankfully, they're just sharing the science behind the warp drive and the sensors, and a few solutions to improve our existing weapons, but not the actual items, apart the anti-Minbari sensors. Even those have been designed for being reproducible by our existing infrastructure, and we are in fact starting our own production at Proxima, Mars, New Eden and here."  
The president didn't need any explanation for that 'thankfully'. The old trick of selling advanced technology but not the means to reproduce it to make the buyer dependant on the seller for new items and spare parts was still used, particularly by the Centauri (who had tried to sell older ship hulls even to Earthgov, who had seen through it and opted to fund the developement of hyperspace-capable Earth ships) and the Narn (who would sell antique weapons to everyone who would pay and didn't have the ability to replicate them, and sold their service heavy particle lasers and pulse cannons to Earth only because they expected the Minbari to both destroy Earth's ability to reproduce them and think the suppliers were the Centauri).  
By doing what they had done, Federation, Klingon and Rihannsu had renounced a potentially decisive influence on the Earth Alliance, going a long way to prove their good faith-enough even for the president and her secretary of defense, even after the League's betrayal.  
"In practical terms, how does it translates?" the president asked.  
"For starters, we've solved the powering problems of the _Poseidon_ and the _Medusa_." Clark replied, referring to the almost completed supercarrier under construction near Neptune and the insanely overgunned battleship being build at Proxima. Already in the design phase the technicians hadn't been sure of their ability to actually power the behemots due their sheer size (and, in _Medusa_'s case, the immense array of weapons that outgunned two or three _Shargotti_). "We won't be able to implement all the suggestions from the Rihannsu until we can build working artificial gravity generators, but the current 25% increase in our fusion reactors' output is more than enough to power the vessels.  
"About our weapons, assistance from Rihannsu and Klingon engineers allowed us to _double_ the range and efficiency of both plasma and particle weapons. Also, the main armament of the _Omega_-class battlecruisers will consist of heavy particle laser-pulse arrays instead than a mix of pulse cannons and particle lasers, something we didn't expect to be able to do in less than ten years, and Federation assistance with railguns allowed us to double their rate of fire.  
"For the defense, the Federation used to employ a shield system similar to the E-web, and they explained our technicians how to increase its resistance to the Minbari neutron-based weapons. Also, we've managed to glean something useful for the Zeus Project.  
"About the sensors, the new array include four different devices: their standard subspace sensor, a metaphasic sensor, a quantum beacon, and a background radiation anomaly tracker. All sensors have been proved effective against the Minbari stealth device, and the data from the subspace sensors is being used to develope a new hyperspace-based device.  
"On the long term, we plan to slow down the _Omega_ production after completing the first batch. With the upgraded fleet capable to finally take on the Minbari and the Zeus Project almost completed we just don't need so many of them anymore."  
"At which point is the Zeus Project?"  
"The technologies are being developed faster than originally expected before the war. R&D has successfully tested both artificial gravity generators and a subspace field generator, and they expect to develope practical artificial gravity and impulse drive in five years. Also, they've finally reproduced the bio-armor from the Syria Planum relic."  
"How?"  
"Agricoltural technology bought from the Rihannsu for the autonomous space stations was applied to the task." Clark couldn't help but smile at the irony of a technology born to feed being applied to military aims, and wonder at how the Rihannsu, who were limited at a single twin planet until a century ago, had developed such advanced cloning and seeding technologies so fast. Probably the answer was in the report from the Internal Affair agent on _Medea_ that he still had to read... "What we can produce is not as good as the original, but remains stronger than anything we have against most energy weapons. Kinetic weapons would be more problematic to defend against, but the problem can be avoided by using it in conjunction with metallic armor."  
"And warp drive?"  
"At least twenty years away, maybe more. And an unknown time before our warp drives will be practical to use."  
"Let's hope we survive long enough, then."  
Elizabeth Levy said that, but she was confident. With this help, and particularly if Operation Gondor succeeded, the course of the war would finally get better for Earth Alliance.

"The course of this war has taken a turn for the worse." Shai Alyt Branmer, the War Leader, declared to the assembled Shai Alyts.  
"Why? The humans are still no match for us."  
Once again, Branmer resisted the temptation of facepalming. For two years the Minbari had fought with Earth Alliance, dealt with their skills and deceptions, and suffered the supply problems caused by the Starkiller and the other commerce raiders, and they _still_ had to learn some of the basics.  
Formerly a high priest and a military history scholar with a past as ship commander in the Religious Caste, at the start of the war he had applied for membership to the Star Riders clan, offering his knowledge of Valen's strategies and tactics, and, due his knowledge and service record and his father's (a Star Rider himself) own service record, was granted a post as one of the clan's Shai Alyts, albeith with advisorial duties. Then the _Drala Fi_ was destroyed while carrying Shai Alyt Veroon, the War Leader, and his chosen successor was lost in hyperspace when the Earthers deactivated a whole sector of hyperspace beacons. As he had both anticipated Starkiller's method to destroy the _Drala Fi_ and the chance the humans would switch off the beacons, the Grey Council placed Branmer in command of the whole Minbari military, giving him the chance to teach the Warriors to _think_ instead of charging through the enemy lines and expect the enemy to just die.  
And while they were finally starting to use their brains, they still committed very stupid errors. Like forgetting logistics.  
"The tonnage of shipping lost to apparent enemy action in the last month is three quarters of what we've lost to all causes in the whole war." Branmer calmly replied. "With those ships we've lost great quantities of consumables, two tank regiments, nine of infantry and five Tishat squadrons being moved to the front lines for the imminent offensive on Proxima, one tunnel combat-trained infantry regiment bound to the Death World of Cyrus, and countless numbers of individual weapons, replacement armors, spare parts and other supplies.  
"Also, we've lost _all_ the escorts of the disappeared merchants. Apart the five trade frigates, that, while included in the lost shipping, had excellent crews comparable to our first line personnel, this includes six _Leshat_ scouts, eighteen _Tigarin_ patrol cruisers, forty escort frigates, twenty armored cruisers, sixty _Enfali_ patrol cruisers and one _Ovalrin_.  
"All but the _Ovalrin_ were crewed by second line personnel, but they were still useful for escort duty, and could be used in combat if necessary.  
"Finally, the lack of supplies and ground troops will slow our offensive even further, and we could possibly lose our hold on the Death World." he concluded, remembering the Shai Alyts of the ferocious battles in the mines of Cyrus that earned it the name of Death World, and how prospectors and a scattering of soldiers were massacring the Minbari Warriors in the tunnel war. "I ask you: did any of your warriors see anything unusual?"  
"Nothing, for now." Shai Alyt Shakiri said. He was one of the less annoying ones, arrogant as any of the career officers but smart enough to plan for everything he could think of. It was the one reason he had been placed in charge of the Convoy Command, as he could anticipate some of the humans' tricks and plan to counter the ones he missed the first time. "Before being summoned I received a report from a troop convoy that sighted a human cruiser and two killers, accompained by a ship and a fighter of unknown origins." Two killers, the human cruiser variant equipped with that execrable projectile cannon. It was to counter that weapon that the late Veroon had ordered to replace the _Sharlin_ with the _Shargotti_ in the assembly lines, just in case: a normal _Sharlin_ would be crippled or dead if hit just once, a well-commanded _Shargotti_ could take the lucky hit (even two if they didn't hit anything crucial or in the same place) and smite the impudent attacker. "Due the recent problems and its importance I had this convoy being reinforced with a _Shargotti_ and a trade frigate and a non-standard complement in addition to the standard ships, so we'll be able to know if it's another human deception, if they broke our stealth, or something else."  
Thanks Valeria for small graces! Now they would have an hint about what was happening. And, even if he didn't dare to admit it, Branmer hoped it was deception or something else. He had no idea of what the humans would do with the ability to target the Minbari ships.

"_Bet they didn't expect we could target them."_ commander Pierce of the _Hyperion_ gloated.  
"Stop gloating and kill the Ganges." newly promoted fleet captain Panaccio replied.  
The attack, both the final operative test of the new sensors and part of Operation Gondor, was so far going well. Involving the heavy cruisers _Medea_, _Jason_ (another railcruiser) and _Hyperion_ (one of the last pulse cruisers still in service, and widely regarded as the luckiest ship in the fleet due the impossible odds it had survived without enough damage to warrant a refit), the test was a full blown attack on a Minbari convoy escorted by a _Shargotti_ battlecruiser and a trade frigate in addition to the usual complement of two escort frigates, one armored cruiser and three _Enfali_ patrol cruisers. And was going magnificently.  
The battlecruiser, hit in the flank by the full frontal firepower of the two railcruisers, had been literally smashed into pieces by the six high-speed slugs. After that the convoy had panicked and disperder, followed by most of the escorts trying to reach it and open a jump point while the armored cruiser (in this case an upgunned _Trolata_, codename Orca, instead of the usual _Troligan_) used her heavy armour and light but still dangerous firepower to delay the attackers. And she wasn't alone.  
"Incoming fighters." Hasegawa warned. "Piranhas and Reds."  
"Bombers on the Orca, and railguns on the rest of the escort." Panaccio ordered, having to compensate for the incoming Nials and Tishann torpedo fighters instead of the usual combat flyers. Whoever had organized the convoy was _good_. "All ships, interceptors and particle beams on the fighters at my command. Now!"  
As the _Trolata_ finally succumbed to fighter-launched nuclear devices aimed at the holes opened by railgun slugs, the Minbari fighters experienced, for the first time in the war, the terrifying power of Earthforce's point defense: fighter-mounted fusion guns could discharge up to 260 gigawatts of power for brief moments against the 5o megajoules per pulse of an interceptor Mk. II or the 200 megawatts of a standard particle beam, but the lighter Earther weapons were more than enough to kill the Minbari fighters, and without stealth the superior speed and agility of the fighters compared to the flyers was not enough. Especially if the Minbari pilots still had to lose two years of bad habits.  
"Boogey destroyed. Ganges destroyed. Rest of the escort mission-killed." Hasegawa reported. "Barrels still trying to escape."  
"Good. _Hyperion_, finish the escorts. _Jason_ and furies, time to shoot the fishes in those Barrels." Panaccio ordered. "If you see escape pods, recover them. According to the intel, the boneheads hate being captured."  
As _Hyperion_ clinically shot the crippled escorts from behind until they lost singularity containment and exploded, the two railcruisers, their full squadron of Muskrat heavy starfuries (somebody had decided it would be funny to divide a squadron among ships named after a mythical witch and her suicidal husband) and the lighter Auroras of the _Hyperion_ chased and destroyed the nigh-defenseless merchant vessels, without mercy.  
"Wiggy is requesting a jump point to leave." Blazic warned from his postation.  
"Let's oblige him. We did our job, he's about to do his own." Panaccio replied.  
"Where did he found that thing?"  
"It's actually an old model. The missile-armed variant is rare, but he's high enough to have no problem finding it, and he's a veteran fighter pilot."  
"Message from _Eyes_: they'd like to go and report."  
"Wish them safe passage, and tell Wiggy to wait a moment. _Eyes_ could do something stupid."  
It had been a very satisfying combat, proving exactly what could happen if Earthforce ships caught the Minbari unaware and could see them, and showing it to what few allies Earth still had in this region of space.  
The visitors didn't like any expansion of the war, but considered them already in it due their activities, and the Drazi were _really_ interested about what happened to those three attack fleets sent to help Earthforce that 'disappeared' in hyperspace...

"I take the convoy has disappeared." Branmer said seeing Shakiri's sullen face.  
"Worse." he replied. "Alyt Savani, commander of the armored cruiser _Shield of Saints_, saw fit to transmit its sensor log to Convoy Command in real time. The humans attacked head on, the killships shattering the battlecruiser _White Star_ in their first attack, and were hitting both _Shield of Saints_ and the trade frigate when we lost contact."  
"Valen's name... And the aliens?"  
"We identified one of the ships: it is a _Garut_-class survey ship, of Centauri making. One of the ships they sell."  
Translation: it could be owned by anyone but the Ch'lonas. As they had discovered after reemerging for the war, the Centauri had sold decommissioned and stripped down hulls of their ships to anyone willing to buy (anyone but the Ch'lonas. They gathered a lot of ill will due their 'bad manners', to the point that even the Narn complained the Centauri didn't exterminate them when they had the chance), and the Earther organization Belt Alliance had sold the Delta fighter and plans for it to anyone willing to buy (again anyone but the Ch'lonas. Being their closest neighbours, the Earthers were the most annoyed by their bad manners). Still, there was a chance to find out.  
"Hull markings or I.D.?"  
"It was outside of visual range, and running no I.D."  
Of course. The _Garut_'s crew wasn't stupid...  
"I'll have to talk with the Council." he said. "The time to shame our intelligence into doing their job has come before I expected."

"Easier than expected." newly re-promoted rear admiral Kirk said. "You'd expect the Minbari to be more watchful after discovering about Myoto..."  
"Our allies never raided the system. They've become suicidally complacent." his longtime friend and first officer, captain Spock, replied.  
"Allowing us to sneak in at sublight without cloaking. Wondering what the Rihanh have hidden here... Mr. Chekov, our target?"  
"Target Dia detected. Target Arc is approaching it." the tactical officer replied.  
"Of course... Mr. Christiano, let's say hi."  
USS _Enterprise_ (NCC-1701-A), supposed to be decommissioned after Khitomer but repaired and kept in service for one last mission, accelerated at warp speed, moving from her position near the system's Oort cloud 'upward' the planetary orbits to right before the ship codenamed Dia, the _Valen'tha_, and, following Minbari tradition, opened all gunports.  
"Greetings. This is rear admiral James Tiberius Kirk, of the United Federation of Planets, and I speak for both my government and our allies, the Rihannsu Star Empire and the Klingon Empire." he announced via tachion communication. "Without any provocation you attacked the Planet of Galactic Peace, our joint colony at Nimbus III. Such an act would be considered punisheable with war with all of our powers under normal conditions, but you sterilized it, all because the Rihanh people decided to house Earth Alliance refugees on another world and dared to defend themselves when one of your ships attacked their empress.  
"By your own logic, we should burn your worlds, crack them open, and seed your stars, until the Minbari will be a footnote in history, and their fall a children's tale to warn against the dangers of arrogance. But we are somewhat civilized, more than you anyway, and demand only justice.  
"You will surrender, and pay reparations to us and the Earth Alliance. You will renounce to three quarters of your military fleet, either by destroying it or surrendering it, and will be placed under military limitations until proved to not be a danger for your peers. And you will surrender, to be tried for war crimes and crimes against sentience, the ones who voted for extermination of Earth Alliance, ordered the attack on the Planet of Galactic Peace, and the commanders of the Wind Sword ships that executed the attack.  
"When you accept these terms you will contact us with the tachion frequence I'm using right now. Do it soon, or the blood of your people shall be on _your_ hands."  
After that, _Enterprise_ disappeared, hidden by the cloaking device Kirk himself had 'appropriated' from _Memenda_ and still into Federation hands (formally as a 'gift' of empress Ael, after the Second Romulan War). The only one in Federation's hands... But there was no need for the Minbari to know that.

"Neroon, please have a spar with Shai Alyt Ramoon, I feel he needs to be retrained." Branmer stated, making sure the responsible of Minbar's guard would feel the supreme commander's displeasure at what had just happened. "Also, I'd like to speak with Anla'shok Na Turval."  
As Neroon went to execute his orders, the War Leader of the Minbari Federation prepared himself. He had opposed the attack on the Rihani, and now, just as expected, they were coming to fight, and with allies. He would just like to know how did they pass the guard in the hyperspace passage without being noticed, in order to block them. Them entering the war had just complicated things much more.

_Author notes_

I choose to use Morgan Clark for a reason: we know _next to nothing_ about him. We know about his actions as vice-president and president and that he was backed by the Shadows and the Drakh in some capacity, but nothing else.

According to the RPG, Earthforce deployed jump point inhibitors to protect their ships from the Minbari jump point attacks, and during the Battle of the Line a _massive_ one was used to interdict the opening of jump points in the whole inner system (the Minbari jumped in at Io and outside the asteroid belt). Where they found the technology is not stated.

The Alcubierre Drive Theory is a real life scientific theory on faster-than-light travel that presents various similarities to _Star Trek_'s warp drive (something that Miguel Alcubierre himself has admitted). I discovered it when AlbertG mentioned Alcubierre in _A Thin Veneer_, and decided to see if it was a Trek character.

_Poseidon_ and _Medusa_ come from the RPGs. _Poseidon_ is an immense battlecarrier with a capacity of 288 Starfuries. While destroyed in battle by the Minbari, the design was sound and, after the war, five upgraded _Poseidon_-class supercarriers were built. _Medusa_ is the mightiest warship of the war, equipped with an immense array of weapons and (theorically) capable of hitting and defeating the Minbari vessels with the sheer volume of fire. _Medusa_ was still under construction when the Minbari hit Proxima, and was destroyed with her shipyard.

The Zeus Project is the RPG name for a developement programme that would produce the _Warlock_, ships based on its technology and an hyperspace-based sensor capable of tracking _all_ Minbari ships (the _Omega_-class destroyers already had a sensor capable of locking on the Minbari ships, but didn't work with some of the smaller vessels and was prone to malfunction until the 2258 upgrade).

Other data from the RPG: in 2147 the InterPlanetary Expeditions (IPX) corporation discovered alien technology on Mars in the Syria Planum site. If you don't know whose technology it was or what IPX hadn't discovered _yet_, you should stop reading and go watching _Babylon 5_.

Let's face it: most Minbari warriors are arrogant to the point of stupidity. Granted, there are exceptions (Neroon, while insufferably arrogant, could think and proved it many times, and could also admit having done something stupid when you presented him with evidence of his errors), but if Shakiri could rise to the leadership of the Warrior Caste and then being lured at the Starfire Wheel so easily then there's something seriously wrong among them.

The Tishat is an older Minbari fighter design, still used because its aerodynamic profile makes it a good atmospheric craft, while the Nial (better armed and, in space, faster and more manouverable), would be a nightmare to handle in atmospheric combat.

The _Ovalrin_ is a very rare Minbari starship, designed not as an actual warship but to move naval vessels from the seas of one planet to the seas of another. As such there's not a lot of them, and they are rarely seen in space.

The EAS _Hyperion_, pulse cruiser with hull marking IAK 21494 and pennant number 21, was present at the first contact with the Minbari, at the Battle of the Line, a 2256 wargame where it kicked the _Agamemnon_'s ass (I remember you that _Agamemnon_ is an _Omega_-class destroyer. Granted, Sheridan was new in command and the first officer was sabotaging the drills to take over, but luck is still needed), the battle for the Great Machine and at least one engagement of the Earth Alliance Civil War (Sheridan side). Last time we saw her firing she was still a pulse cruiser.

The Muskrat is a two-seater heavy starfury. Due an unfortunate mishap it was mistaken for the Badger, designed for _In the Beginning_ but never seen.

Apart the Narn, Earth Alliance had a few allies during the Minbari War. With the possible exception of the Drazi they didn't actually fight the Minbari, but their activities (hosting refugees and supplying raw materials, weapons and technologies) and other factors could have placed them on the Minbari shit list after Earth was destroyed.


	4. Preparatives for War

Factions are gearing up for war. Remember, the Minbari are no pushovers, even without Vorlon weapons.  
by lord Martiya

**02: Preparatives for War**

"I, Branmer, am honored of being received by the Nine." the War Leader said.  
"How did that ship arrive here unnoticed?" Satai Shakat, of the Moon Shields, asked.  
"Shai Alyt Ramoon proved himself too complacent, and allowed the intruder to scan the system from 'above' the orbital plan before using an unknown faster-than-light drive to come here without using hyperspace. I've already sent Alyt Neroon to retrain Ramoon, and taking steps to enlist the Anla'shok to guard this system."  
The three Warrior Caste Satai nodded in approval for Branmer's quick correction of the event.  
"The intrusion of Kirk also explains the event I wished to tell you about." Branmer continued. "The Humans have broken our stealth. And the Rihani, allies of Kirk's Federation, have shown that ability."  
"Are you sure of what you say?" Satai Coplann, of the Star Raiders, asked.  
"Shai Alyt Shakiri presented me with conclusive evidence, paid in blood by the armored cruiser _Shield of Saints_. Killships have destroyed a _Shargotti_ without failing a shot, and _Shield of Saints_ survived only long enough to warn Convoy Command.  
"Due this battle I request authorization for the full mobilization of the Minbari armed forces. I also need to talk with Deathwalker."  
"Biological weapons are and remain forbidden." Satai Delenn reprimanded him.  
"I know. But it's possible, even probable, that she knows what star Sol is. Unless the Council wishes to accept the enemy's conditions, we need to knock down Earth's ability to support the war before fighting the Rihani and their allies."  
"Why didn't you ask her earlier?" Satai Morann of the Wind Swords demanded.  
"We have grown arrogant and complacent. Against a technologically advanced enemy our Warriors would have been slaughtered by deception and their own incompetence, and they would have exhausted their weapons as what we have isn't designed to be produced fast. Against Earth Alliance the Warriors have bled and been forced to relearn the skills they are supposed to have, and the Workers have been shown the virtue of designs made for faster production."  
The Satais of the Warrior and Worker Castes had to accept the jab: even if they would never admit it in public, the Humans were more skilled in tactics and strategies than the Minbari Warriors (it was half of the reason the war was still raging instead of having ended in a month of epic massacres and six of mop ups as bragged by the late Veroon before his death at the hands of Starkiller), and since Valen the Workers had complicated the designs of many items, including warships, lengthening the building and reparation time over any reasonable terms (the other half of the reason the war was still raging: where the warcruiser Blood of Saints, damaged in the first contact with Earthforce, was still finishing being repaired and the first ships ordered by Shai Alyt Veroon were only now entering service, the humans had built and rebuilt their fleet at least three times).  
"Very well. Go and prepare the fleet." Satai Coplann ordered.  
"Wait. What about the ultimatum?" Delenn asked. "The Wind Swords acted without orders, and now a more dangerous enemy is upon us. The humans have paid enough for the idiocy of one man. I say we let them chastise the Wind Swords, and try and reach a compromise with the humans."  
"And if they asked for your head?" Coplann demanded to know.  
"Then I'll give it to them."  
Branmer groaned. With Dukhat's death the Grey Council had been prone to infighting, and while it was limited to furious verbal fight he had a terrible headache every time he got stuck witnessing one. Thankfully this time Delenn and Dhaliri (another of the Religious Caste Satais, who had never forgiven her for voting for the war) were agreeing.  
In the end it was decided they'd give up the Wind Swords leaders who had ordered and executed the attack on Nimbus (all members of an extremist faction known as the Storm Blades), and that, thanks to the ambiguity of Delenn's cry of 'kill them all', they would finally accept the surrender of the Earth Alliance and put them in the Protectorate after executing any remaining survivor of the _Prometheus_ fleet. They knew there still were: two ships of the accursed fleet hadn't been at Jericho when the Minbari struck, and while the dreadnought _Schwarzkopf_ had fallen at the guns of _Drala Fi_ in the same engagement that ended with Veroon's death the _Hyperion_ was still flying and battling. Plus there was the chance crewmembers of the ships destroyed at Jericho had left with Jankowski, and that there were survivors from _Schwarzkopf_, as Veroon hadn't yet rendered the ship when Starkiller completed his safety precautions and activated _Lexington_'s disaster beacon (Branmer could see it hadn't been a trap, just a desperate man taking sensible precautions against a superior enemy who wanted him dead). As Delenn would bring the humans the news, Branmer was tasked to mobilize the fleet, as a precaution against enemies of Minbar capitalizing on what they could believe was a moment of weakness.  
Not even Branmer thought that, maybe, the Earth Alliance would refuse such terms.

* * *

"_The mad ones could break the Circle. They must be stopped."_  
"_The lighting is weaker than the thought. We must be careful."  
_"_Raptor can fight raptor. They shall fly again."_

* * *

Morgan Clark was baffled. As expected, the report from the Internal Affairs agent on _Medea_ was concentrated more on the technical aspects than sociological or political ones, but contained very interesting data, that explained many things and caused more questions.  
It easily explained the Rihan ability to expand that fast: a combination of cloning technologies developed for centuries for agricultural purposes (they had experienced various famines in the travel from their ancestral homeworld to the current ones), 'birth-forcing' techniques (whatever they were. He wasn't sure he wanted to know), simple copulation like the world was about to end and the incorporation in their empire of colonies of exiles from their homeworld (or 'proto-Romulans', as the Federation called them) had helped expanding their population alongside their space.  
It explained the various technical differences: the Federation technology was based on the fusion of their members' various technologies and had a deep understanding of them, resulting in powerful and well-built ships and superior powering systems and shields, the Klingon had forcibly taken their technology from alien invaders that bit more than they could chew and (aside for the choice of continuously refining their beam weapon technology) never needed to develop it until the Federation fast rise to power, resulting in capable but badly built ships with more punch they had any right to (or, as the Rihanh put it, the Klingon couldn't be a decent ship but were the best at destroying them), and the Rihanh had continuously refined the technologies that brought them on their new homeworld but hadn't even conceived that someone would take the risk of developing antimatter-fueled engines until they encountered them in battle, and to match the Federation and the Klingon had to refine their fusion reactors over what anyone else considered possible while desperately trying to reverse-engineer safe antimatter-powered drives (something they had succeeded into only a little more than twenty years earlier) and building the infrastructure necessary to support them, with the end result being very well-built ships with either the best fusion reactors around and relatively short range or Klingon-derived antimatter reactors and longer range.  
It didn't explain how the other Earth had apparently developed the technologies to implement the Alcubierre Drive Theory without any alien help or technology to reverse-engineer.  
"Maybe we didn't get the right people interested..." he mused.  
Out of curiosity he decided to search some of the names on Wikipedia (faster than going to the Alliance Central Archive (isolated for security reasons, meaning you had to physically go to one of the secured terminals and insert your authorization before having the data) and its source for much of the pre-World War III data), starting from the developers of artificial gravity.  
After searching the first name, that of Yevgeny Podkletnov, he decided it was better to warn his old colleagues. There was something fishy there, and he hadn't the time or the resources to look into that by himself.  
Now, if only he could understand _why_ Klingon and Rihanh had been allies close enough that they used two almost-identical designs if they could barely stand each other...

* * *

"Oh, ambassador G'Kar!"  
G'Kar, Narn ambassador to the Earth Alliance, resisted the urge to facepalm. Why, why did the Centauri ambassador, Londo Mollari, enjoy so much tormenting him? It was almost like he was convinced they were fated to kill each other and had decided to strike first... And now they had met again. Better be polite, this month the Corazzieri were mounting guard to the Earth Alliance president and Senate and tended to be rather 'forceful' when stopping brawls before the Senate building...  
"Ambassador Mollari..." he replied.  
"_Former_ ambassador, please. I just resigned." Mollari replied, for G'kar's chagrin: for how much he enjoyed tormenting him, Mollari was a humble (for Centauri standards) and reasonable person that wouldn't do anything to antagonize him without a passable reason, while most Centauri ambassadors tended to antagonize the Narn just because. Still, better not showing it.  
"How sad. Please remember me to celebrate."  
"Verrrrrrrrrrry funny. Just out of curiosity, will your people join?"  
"The Kha'ri is still debating about the opportunity about exposing ourselves. You, on the other hand-"  
"Are selling weapons to Earth, with the Minbari believing our pulse cannons and copies of the heavy particle laser are other weapons you are selling them at much higher prices hoping to get the Minbari sicked at us."  
"What?!"  
"The Minbari aren't stupid, they knew about your ploy since the beginning. They didn't care as long as the Earth Alliance couldn't target them, but now they may change their minds..."  
Oh, shit...  
"And you know this how?" G'kar asked.  
"A member of a Satai's staff is actually a spy from their ancestral rogue faction, and decided to pass me intelligence to help messing with the Minbari." Mollari replied with obviously fake modesty. "He's still getting paid on the side, and doesn't know I know."  
"And you know that _how_?"  
"A Minbari that turns traitor and has five children, with modern Minbari males tending to be sterile and that faction having broke away when they were still fertile?"  
G'kar had to admit it, it was reasonable. And made him hate Mollari even more.  
He hated him a lot more when he realized Mollari had slipped him a data crystal... By putting it in his wallet without even deigning to steal what petty cash he had in it.

* * *

Space Station Proxima Prime, Proxima orbit.

The station was on high alert, as both intelligence and the path of the Minbari thrust suggested her as the next target of the enemy juggernaut. Even with the reinforcements from the new allies Earthforce was proceeding with Operation Cadia, the evacuation of most civilians and the shipyards to Sol and a secret location while the Army would have tried and resisted the Minbari invasion as long as possible, keeping them busy.  
Earthforce personnel was quite nervous: the Minbari tended to follow set patterns and deviate little or nothing from their orders, but with Branmer having recently proved himself much more imprevedible with his assault on Beta Durani (well away from his main thrust and immediately following the attack on Cooke) there was the chance he wouldn't invade (with political considerations forcing him to reinforce the troops and stop advancing if the Earthforce armies actually defeated the Minbari), or even walk around Proxima and attack directly Earth.  
Also, the League's betrayal had caused a certain amount of distrust toward aliens, and the tension among the allies (particularly between the Rihanh and the Klingon and between the two feline alien groups in the Federation contingent) didn't help to calm people.  
And the laughter of a Kzin (the biggest alien cats of the Federation, hulking lion-like creatures with bat-like ears that flew the Federation fighters) was _scary_. It wasn't until they saw the feline rolling on the floor of the mess hall in laughter near a smashed table that the non-Kzinti realized there was no threat, while the Earthforce pilot at the (now destroyed) table with the Kzin looked at the lion-man.  
"What did you tell him?" one of the emotionless Vulcans of the Federation group asked.  
"We-well, I had asked about how his people had entered the Federation, a-"  
"HE TOOK US FOR SLAVE SOLDIERS!" the Kzin roared after stopping laughing. His declaration caused _all_ of the visitors in the hall to laugh. Even the Vulcan was chuckling.  
"What?! You did conquer the Kzinti, and you're using them as cannon fodder!"  
"We are not." the Vulcan replied. "When they attacked the Federation and lost we disarmed the Kzinti Patriarchy, but they are culturally required to try and be heroes, and they make very good fighter pilots.  
"While some of their soldiers became pirates or tried to restore their military power, most Kzinti made the logical choice and served as the Federation's fighter pilots, a tradition that still continues."  
"But... Why laughing?"  
"Because no Kzin would allow himself to be enslaved, and anyone foolish enough to try and enslave one would be killed and eaten. In that order, if he's lucky. And before you ask, they are safe: they are taught the difference between an hero and a fool during childhood, and won't attack first. Unless you are a Minbari Warrior."  
"Pork tastes better." a newly arrived Kzin (one of the few serving in Marine units) declared. "Less bony, and healthier when raised well. What?"  
Every non-Kzinti in the mess hall wasn't feeling hungry any more.

* * *

Satai Delenn was nervous. Her mission could finally end the war, assuming the aliens would accept the compromise.  
Said aliens didn't fully trust the Minbari, something to be expected after what happened to Nimbus III, and had demanded the talks to be held, from ship to ship, in a neutral system of their choice, and that the Minbari brought with them four ships at most, as they would do. The Minbari had accepted, and had sent the modified _Leshat_-class scout _Ingata_ (a ship Delenn had been surprised to learn was Alyt Neroon's personal command) as the ambassadorial vessel, escorted by the _Troligan_-class armoured cruiser _Blood Song_ (that would serve as decoy for for the ambassadorial ship, receiving Delenn with a communication laser and then broadcasting it) and the Religious Caste's _Sharlin_-class warcruisers _Dogato_ and _Starfire_.  
At exactly the announced time a jump point opened, letting out _Enterprise_, a blocky but vaguely avian-looking ship running an ID as _Klotos_, a rounder avian-like vessel actually decorated with an enormous bird of prey identifying herself as _Honor Blade_, and, last, the _Nova_-class dreadnought _Éclair_, her rows of guns thankfully aimed away from the Minbari ships.  
After Neroon, who was sitting in the command bridge, explained to the Humans and their allies that they were keeping their weapons powered and performing scans in case someone tried to disrupt the talks and suggested them to do the same, Delenn presented herself to the ambassadors as a Satai and member of the Grey Council, sent to deal peace.  
"_You know about our conditions, then."_ the Klingon ambassador, a Kor son of Rynar, asked.  
"Yes." Delenn admitted. "We are willing to surrender the responsible of the attack on the Planet of Galactic Peace. They acted without approval from the Grey Council or even their Clan, they only deserve to be punished. But we cannot give up Shai Alyt Sineval: he disappeared with his ship and two other warcruisers a few days after his crime."  
"_Is this the same Sineval in command of the _Shargotti-class _warcruiser _Trigati_, and the _Sharlin_-class _Strelas'tha_ and _Vindira_?"_ the Federation ambassador, Curzon Dax, asked.  
"Yes... I take you know what happened to him."  
"_Our psychologists are trying to heal the madness he fell into when captured. Some of our troops are rather scary..."_  
Delenn didn't like that revelation: it meant that Earth's new allies had been able to attack and _capture_ three warcruisers fast enough that they couldn't even call for help.  
"_What about the other conditions?"_ the Human ambassador, David Sheridan, asked.  
That was the moment Delenn waited for and dreaded. It was the chance to finally end the war, assuming the aliens accepted to let Earth go.  
"The Grey Council has determinated to accept Earth Alliance's surrender and place it under protectorate, on condition that any survivor of Jankowski's expedition is surrendered for trial for Dukhat's murder." she announced.  
"_Unacceptable."_ Sheridan replied, with the aliens' ambassadors nodding and grinning.  
"Come again?" Delenn asked.  
"_We tried to make reparations even before your attacks at Jericho and Vega. We tried to surrender as soon as your technological superiority became evident, but you ignored us, and attacked civilian assets and population of four neutral parties even before Nimbus III._  
"_For the death of one ma-person in an unfortunate misunderstanding, you murdered hundreds of thousands. By the same logic, you should be exterminated, but we only want justice."_  
Delenn didn't expect that. After all the death in the war, it made sense that they would refuse to surrender as soon as they saw a chance to fight back. Yet, she had to protest a point.  
"The Grey Council only authorized attacks on Human assets, entrusting the Warleader Branmer with the application of such orders. Where and when the Minbari would have attacked neutral parties?"  
"_Not all humans are citizens of the Earth Alliance."_ Sheridan replied coolly. _"A score of countries on Earth and a group of rogue human colonies are not part of the Earth Alliance, yet you illegally attacked ships belonging to non-Alliance member humans, plus Jericho, whose surface belongs to a non-Alliance country."_  
Delenn expected that a few key members of the intelligence would be 'retrained' by Neroon. There was no way Branmer would let this go unpunished, not when the rumor from the Worker Caste about breakaway Humans outside Regula (that had been decreed to be put under protectorate after the war exactly due their breakaway) had been confirmed. Before that, however, they had to confirm the claim.  
"We will check your claim." she declared. "If true, the Minbari Federation shall offer reparations to the lawful representatives of such nations. But I suggest you reconsider your attitude about our counteroffer to Earth Alliance."  
"_Why?"_  
"Because you can't win, not even with your new allies. The full force of the Minbari Federation is being mobilized, and nobody has ever successfully resisted this power."  
"_One hundred years ago, no power that hadn't mastered antimatter technology had ever offered decent military resistance against a power that had. Then _six_ such powers created the United Federation of Planets to fight the fusion-powered fleets of the Rihannsu, and at the end of the war we had expanded from two systems to dozens, and of the original members of the Federation the Denobulans and the Xindi remain of little significance."_ was the boast from the Rihannsu ambassador, who had (reluctantly) presented herself as Arrhae. _"In fact, what did happen of them?"_  
"_They begged the Terrans to conquer them, I think..."_ Kor replied, not even bothering to hide his amusement.  
"_Only the Xindi. The Denobulans had already been conquered by accident when the Terrans came to help with your cholera, smallpox, ebola, MVD, anthrax and Black Death epidemics, and decided that it was better to recognize it."_ Dax pointed out.  
"_They shouldn't have suggested to use bio weapons where we could listen to them."_ Arrhae replied. _"Besides, we cloned those plagues because we knew Earth had the drugs to cure most of it and could produce the smallpox, and the Denobulans didn't. _We_ didn't want to exterminate them, just to make sure they would learn the lesson. Anyway, Satai, I think you get my point."_  
She already knew that point. Veroon's report from Vega and the loss of the warcruiser _Godlance_ at Jericho when the commander compromised his stealth for a few seconds had hammered it home from the start, and part of her had hoped that Earth Alliance penetrated their stealth and forced the Minbari to think and ask for peace before they were literally buried under an avalanche of well-aimed bodies.  
What she didn't know before and really scared her was how easily the Rihannsu seemed to consider use of biological weapons as long as their enemies _proposed_ using them. The Minbari had already sterilized a planet under their protection, and she had no idea on their retaliation if they went at war. Also, the looks of the Rihannsu ambassador seemed familiar, and one of the plagues listed had an obviously Human name but was implied to be from one of the Federation's races.  
"I still suggest you to reconsider. It would save many lives." Delenn replied. "The good of the many outweighs the good of the few, and who, among the Humans, would gain from continuing the war?"  
"_We ask for five people, eight at most, to be tried, and we don't have death penalty. What prevent you from accepting our condition?"_ Sheridan replied.  
"It is widely understood among the Minbari that the Grey Council can't do wrong, and this is one of the pillars of our society. That's why only me, another one of the five who voted for the war and a third member were willing to accept that condition."  
"_You voted for th-What the hell?! Captain, what are you doing?!"  
_Suddenly the holographic projectors of the room started showing the other ambassadorial fleet, with _Eclair_ turning to present her missile batteries and as much of her guns as she could at the Minbari. Apparently Sinclair managed to convince _Eclair_'s captain to not shoot, as when the ship completed the turn the turrets were aiming somewhere else and the missile ports were still half-closed, showing the presence of a nuclear-tipped missile in each but preventing the launch.  
"_Sorry for the interruption. Captain Cartwright didn't 'appreciate' the revelation, and was about opening fire."_ Sheridan explained. _"We didn't expect you would send one of the people who voted for the war."_  
"I volunteered." Delenn replied. "Dukhat had just died in my arms when I was asked to cast the decisive vote, and I've tried to stop the war since I realized what I had done in that moment of fury."  
"_I understand. And the other one?"_  
"He had personally ordered to open the gun ports and scan your ships, and believed the commander of the _Valen'tha_ had respected his orders of not powering the weapons unless ordered otherwise by Dukhat or the Council or you attacked first. That encounter was just a series of horrible mistakes and misunderstanding, on both sides!"  
"_We know of Jankowski's. What about yours?"_  
"We were about to go somewhere else, well away from Human space, so we didn't have readily available data on your language or even your ships, even if we knew of your explorations toward our space. We expected you to know about our custom of opening gunports as a sign of respect, even if we hadn't interacted with outsiders for hundreds of cycles. And when we saw our enemies, the Shag Toth, Dukhat was ordering to close the gunports right as the commander powered the weapons to kill them."  
"_What are these Shag Toth?"_ Curzon Dax asked, curious about the hateful reaction of the Minbari.  
"Many races know them as Soul Hunters."  
Arrhae's reaction of slapping her forehead indicated she knew of the Shag Toth and the nature of the Minbari hate for them.  
"_I hope they didn't get Dukhat."_ Arrhae asked, confirming that she understood the implications of the Soul Hunters being there.  
"They were repealed, and the one who passed the wall of bodies was properly punished by one of my fellow Satais." Delenn replied. It was only because the accursed Shag Toth had the sensibility of wearing armour and helmet that he had survived Morann breaking his family staff on its head, and even with that its helmet had been broken and the head was bleeding. Pity it managed to escape...  
"_What are you talking about?"_ Sheridan asked.  
"_The Soul Hunters believe that souls do not survive death unless helped, and feel it's their duty to preserve those of the greatest people. They have the technology to catch souls at the moment of death, and the innate ability to _feel_ when someone is about to die. The Minbari believe in reincarnation, and the Soul Hunters' very existence is an abomination."_ Arrhae explained._ "If Dukhat was half as great as the Minbari think, the Soul Hunters would have naturally come when they sensed his impending death, not imagining that their very presence would be the decisive factor in causing it."_  
"_The sensor records don't show their presence, only an energy spike from the _Valen'tha_ that made Jankowski attack."_  
"_Their stealth technology is advanced, beyond the Minbari's own. Our own cloaking technology was originally a copy of theirs coupled with holographic projectors, before we fully understood it and started improving it."_  
And that was a very useful information for the Minbari. They knew how to detect the Shag Toth, so there was a chance the Workers could be able to break the Rihannsu stealth.  
"_Whatever the reason, they still didn't stop."_ Kor pointed out. _"Ending a battle to save an Empire or to pursue justice is no defeat, but continuing it for pride and no prize is. In the name of the Klingon Empire, I say that this war shall continue until the Minbari surrender to our initial demands!"_  
"_No matter how strange it is, but the Rihanh second the Klingon: anything else would be dishonourable and an offence to the innocent dead and the Minbari's own Dukhat."_ Arrhae added calmly.  
"_That's what the Earth Alliance people demands."_ Sheridan confirmed.  
"_The Federation too: there will be no separate peace."_ Dax declared, sealing the situation.  
"I hope you will not regret this." Delenn said.  
"_We will not."_ Sheridan replied. _"But I'm surprised about the lack of 'interruptions'..."_  
"The Warleader has dealt with the Storm Blade faction, and nobody else was sufficiently foolhardy to oppose the Grey Council. Good luck."  
Delenn closed the communication, and as the Minbari fleet entered hyperspace she was visited by Neroon.  
"You seem distressed, Satai." he said.  
"I hoped they would see reason." she replied. "And I'm scared. How could they capture three warcruisers without a single warning being sent? What kind of power they have?!"  
"You have not served on the Religious Caste's warships."  
"What's that supposed to mean?"  
"Your fear is born by the lack of information supplied to any naval recruit. Our stealth depends on not being compromised by active sensor scans or broadcasting."  
"I know." she replied, knowing how some of the early losses in the war had been caused by ship commanders activating their scans to reply what had happened in the first contact and jam Earthforce jump drives only to be targeted by any Earth ship in combat range, and having been involved in two such incidents, first in the first contact, when the _Prometheus_ fired specifically on the _Valen'tha_'s sensors, and then at Jericho, where the warcruiser _Blackfire_ used her scanners to jam the Earthforce ships and promptly became the first Minbari ship lost to a railgun, one of the big ones mounted on some starbases. Then Delenn understood: "You mean they caught Sineval while they used their tachion communications and shot those first led by the broadcasting?"  
"They were in fact talking with the Wind Swords elders when the communication was lost and the ship 'disappeared'. After that, it would depend on their numbers and the ability of the boarding party and the arrogance of the defenders. What I wonder is: what monster could scare a Minbari Warrior into madness?"  
To that, Delenn could not reply. She could only hope they lied.

* * *

Branmer was in a contrasting mood. On one hand he was quite happy of having decapitated the Storm Blades faction among the Wind Swords, with the ones who knowingly violated his and the Council's orders to attack Nimbus III being identified and imprisoned on the Wind Sword battlecruiser _Peace Through Firepower_ (whose crew had volunteered to cancel the stain on the Wind Swords' honor and had willingly submitted to the telepathic scans that cleared them), ready to be delivered to the aliens. On the other, Earth Alliance and said aliens had refused the Minbari compromise, and he was about to meet Jha'dur to ask about Earth's position.  
As he entered her apartments, the war criminal smiled and opened the door to her laboratory, presenting him with her biological weapons in mock courtesy, and obliging the Warleader to show her his staff and the impressive array of knives and guns he usually kept hidden. At least she was showing a measure of respect and hiding her 'displeasure' at the Minbari for taking her from her people when they needed her the most...  
"What bring the Warleader of the Federation to my humble abode?" Jha'dur asked.  
"I was seeking information on the location of Earth's sun. I trust you still have it?" Branmer replied.  
"Yes. Yes, I have it. I see you stopped training your Warriors." the Warmaster commented as she checked on her computer.  
"I had to. We have to neutralize Earth before dealing with the new enemy. You'd say Valen is fighting with the Humans..."  
"He is."  
"Very funny, Jha'dur. But we already know about that Sinclair's nickname..."  
"Have you ever heard of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World?"  
Branmer suddenly realized that Jha'dur wasn't joking. She was well known for her habit of talking about something that couldn't possibly relate to what she was asked about only for that something becoming relevant in an unpleasant but crucial way. It was how she would thank for the support to her experiments and vent her hate for her imprisonment, giving useful advice in the most unpleasant way she could think of. Before the initial invasion of Cyrus, Warriors from the ground forces had come to her asking about Human equipment, and had been told in details about their relatively primitive PPGs and even more primitive firearms and that the planet was a mining world with a small garrison and many miners. Between the small garrison and human primitive technology, the Shai Ilyr in charge deemed it an easy conquest, and was buried alive with the first wave of the initial attack force within minutes from landing, without even seeing a Human soldier, and the rest of the initial attack force had been decimated and beaten back with fire and pesticides (something the Human propaganda was determinated to not let them live down, and had nearly choked to death Jha'dur with too much laughter). This time Deathwalker had apparently good reasons to think about a link between Humans and Valen, and it would pay listening her.  
"I did not." Branmer replied, waiting for her to continue.  
"According to an ancient civilization on Earth, these Seven Wonders were the greatest example's of Man's workmanship and intelligence." Jha'dur explained. "They were: the Great Pyramid of Giza, an immense grave for a king thought to be a god by his subjects; the Mausoleum, a monumental grave that the provincial governor of an empire built for himself and his immediate family; the Lighthouse of Pharos Island, the first lighthouse of their world and particularly important for a civilization of sailors; the Colossus of Rhodes, an immense bronze statue of a sun god built to celebrate a victory against a besieging army; the Artemision, a magnificent temple to the goddess of hunt; the Statue of Zeus at Olympia, the most beautiful statue built by the Greeks to honor their greatest god; and the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, hanging gardens extending over an entire city and kept magnificently irrigated in spite of Babylon being in the middle of a desert."  
The last name made Branmer flinch: Babylon was the name of Valen's battlestation, after which he had named his flagship. Not a pleasant coincidence. But Jha'dur wasn't finished.  
"I see you recognized the name." she said. "It's not strange that Earth Alliance's planned trading stations, supposed to foster peace and show off the accomplishments of their modern technology in peace, were to be named after the Seven Wonders.  
"It was an ambitious plan. Io Prime was built to test the concept of the O'Neill-type stations, cylindrical like Valen's. The mid-range bases they had just started building at the beginning of the war were supposed to test the ability for such a station to be autonomous regarding food production. And once their hydroponic gardens had proved themselves, they would build the Seven Wonder Stations. They had already announced the names: Babylon, Artemision, Colossus, Pharos, Zeus, Mausoleum and Pyramid.  
"And, according to what I've heard, Valen's Babylon Station was a massive cylindrical station that simulated gravity with a rotating section, protected by thick armor and a light shield that dissipated energy weapons and armed with heavy pulse cannons, ludicrously powerful plasma cannons, and relatively weak particle weapons that would unfailingly shoot enemy fighters, missiles and even energy pulses out of the sky."  
Branmer didn't like that one bit. One by one, the coincidences weren't important. Many races, including the ancient Minbari, had built at least one rotating station before the development of actual artificial gravity, and cylinders were an obvious choice. More than a few races tried and succeeded in producing plasma weapons as powerful as the Humans' or particle cannons as accurate as the Interceptors (the Minbari themselves had developed a similar weapon, but in the end never mass-produced it and favored the combination of stealth technology and slower-tracking dual-use guns). Thick armor was a standard feature for space stations, and many races had some kind of energy shielding. But when appearing together alongside a name rooted in Human history and the Humans had a fighter pilot nicknamed Valen, it painted a truly creepy picture. There was just one question.  
"How could an Earth Alliance station end in Minbari hands eight hundred years before the Earth Alliance was founded?" Branmer asked.  
"No idea at all." Jha'dur replied. "Time travel of individuals is impossible with Earth, Dilgar or Minbari technology, let alone such a massive station."  
And again, Jha'dur's words had an hidden meaning: somebody probably had time-travel technology that could be used to send Babylon Station and Valen a thousand years back in time. But _who_ had the means and the interest to do such a thing?  
"Here's the coordinates of all Earth Alliance systems I know of, in Earth, Dilgar and Centauri notation." she suddenly said, producing a data crystal. "I've a few problems with the Dilgar coordinates, but your people should be able to do it. Anything else?"  
"Yes, warmaster." Branmer replied as he took the crystal. "As far as you know, do rogue Humans exist, apart the Regula colonists?"  
"I take you mean Humans that aren'r part of Earth Alliance... There are a few city-states on Earth, too small to be even considered for membership by Earth Alliance and too stubborn to ask for annexation to the surrounding Alliance nations. Then there's Vatican City, that exists only because an Alliance member nation doesn't want to be seen as controlling an important religious leader. Then there are three small nations that maintained indipendence and managed to create their own space forces: Republic of South Africa, that seceded from the Alliance right before first contact with the Centauri and last I've heard was slowly preparing to ask back for membership, Daehan Minguk, Republic of Korea in the main Human language, that has a beef with an Alliance member due their occupation of their twin country, and Medīnat Yisrā'el, the State of Israel, which actually has a colony world, Jericho. Jericho's space is under Alliance control, but the surface is Israeli."  
At that, Branmer winced. By firing on the planet they _had_ attacked a neutral Human nation as claimed by the Alliance ambassador, and probably drove the neutrals to help the Alliance. So much for seeding division among the enemy ranks.  
"Finally, we have the proper rogues." Jha'dur continued. "The Regulans, you already know. The Sh'lassen Empire is nothing, just a bunch of isolationist weirdos with a pair of planets and some outdated Earth and Narn technology, and I don't think the Alliance actually knows about them."  
"Then how do _you_ know?" Branmer asked.  
"Narn. Some of them helped us before the current government rose to power and purged our friends, and they sold some tech to the Sh'lassen. Finally, we have the Free Human Union. They are a small but decent interstellar nation, with a fleet made of ships comparable to Earthforce's ones and a few Centauri ships, what remains of a disgraced House after the Alliance and the Emperor found out of the Union and their trade with them. They don't like the Alliance, but are helping with the evaquation of the refugees, and you've already attacked them. They may not name their ships after tales of broken gods, slain monsters and heroes that never surrendered like Earthforce started doing in the last two yea-cycles, but they all hate you, and if they know of the Minbari they know you'll come and kill them."  
"I see. Thanks for your information."  
"No big. But if you want to thank me, try and find a better solution than mine. The Satai are actually trying to do their job, differently from my fellow Warmasters..."  
"What's supposed to mean?"  
"You didn't notice how similar we are."  
"I'm sorry?"  
"I'm not really a soldier. I'm a doctor and an experimental biologist, no matter how good I am at leading fleets in battle and organizing a war. In fact the one reason I was so good was that I noticed how fleets and bodies are similar, and how devastating plagues may be caused by just a trascured case. You have a brain, and destroying it will kill the enemy fleet, it will just take a while to realize. You have vital organs without which an enemy fleet cannot survive. One of my battles was nothing more than an amputation, with the Cascan fleet being the gangrene threatening to kill my fleet, their carriers what had to be cut to save the body, and lasers, bolters and nukes the scalpel." Branmer had no need to remember that battle, where Jha'dur's fleet charged at the Cascan's and destroyed the Cascan carriers before jumping away, leaving to wither and die the non-jump capable ships and fighters that could have destroyed her fleet had she stayed there for just five more minutes. "Likewise you are a priest and an historian, not a soldier, and your ability stems from deep knowledge of ancient military tactics and strategies, and how the smallest distraction may cause disaster.  
"Like me, you are frustrated by the professional soldiers' complacency and inability to apply these simple principles, becoming greater than what we are. You are also frustrated by having to obey to people ignorants and incompetents in military matters, in my case the majority of Warmasters who got their job because of connections, in yours the militarily ignorant majority of the Grey Council and the Warriors too set in the old and useless ways.  
"Because of the Warmasters I had to do things I should have never done, like leading the counterattack on the Drazi front in a way that cost us our chance to eliminate that front and billions of shipping tonnage, and attack the Markab when it would have been smarter attacking the Yolu. You know how that ended. Because of the Grey Council and the pride of the Warrior Caste you had to order massacres of civilians and invasions on planets that you could easily blockade and leave for a following mop-up.  
"Like me, you are going on only because you tell yourself that it's for the greater good, and that at war's end everything will go alright and the idiots replaced by people who thinks before acting. And then, one day, I snapped, killed a fellow Warmaster and made another wish I didn't promise to not kill him, cowed the surviving incompetents, and took over the Imperium in the desperate attempt to stop the rising tide. Oh, and I had the surviving incompetents executed when one of them thought he could organize an hostile takeover. I'll never forget the look on his face when I told him what had happened to his support...  
"Tell me, Shai Alyt Branmer, the Warleader, will you be able to spare the Grey Council if they do something else stupid?"

* * *

Captain Hong Areum wasn't too happy. A volunteer during the Dilgar War, her skills had gained her a good career and a measure of wealth (for Alliance standards. In her native North Korea she would be filthy rich, thanks to how the Chinese occupiers interpretation of socialism), and, during this war, command of EAS _Desperate Warmaster_, one of the most advanced ships in the fleet just assigned to the Long Range Strike Force, the best formation in the fleet, filled with heroes like rear admiral 'Visitation of Woe' McDowell of the _Thunder Child_ (she did not want to know what she had done to get that name from the Minbari), 'Starkiller' Sheridan of the _Lexington_, 'Wild Bill' Hague of the _Endymion_, 'Train Light in the Tunnel' Panaccio of the _Medea_, and 'Damning Dan' Owusu of the _Platypus_. And yet she, her senior officers, the captains and senior officers of the five other ships just assigned to the LRSF, and the Secretary of Defense were drenched in cheap and _stinky_ beer, courtesy of the veteran captains and senior officers of the force and their alka seltzers. No, scratch that: Clark had dodged, and the guys of the railcruisers _Mompracem_ had covered themselves with their umbrellas (they were expectin something like that. And the captain had lost a bet with the doctor about the drink used).  
"This is a great day: for the first time some of the new guys were prepared, and, more important, Secretary Clark dodged the beer! Three cheers for them!" McDowell ordered. That the officers immediately obeyed confirmed their reputation as 'quirky'. "Doctor Kyle?"  
"They passed the test." the chief medical officer of _Thunder Child_ replied.  
"Wait, what test?" captain Netter of the _Persephone_ (one of the new ships) asked.  
"The mission profile of the Long Range Strike Force is simple, and incredibly stressing: we penetrate Minbari space, blow something up, hoist the Jolly Roger on tachion communication to highen our people's morale and piss off the Minbari, and then we run away from what Branmer, Shakiri and Leshat will sick on us." McDowell replied walking for the room, and showing she was wearing a Pattern 1827 Royal Navy Officer's Sword. And now that she noticed, Hong could see that all the veterans but the doctors had a sword, ranging from cutlasses to longer sword, including Panaccio's basket-hilted and-Where did Sheridan found a _kaiguntō_ of all swords, and one with a western guard at that?! "Somehow, we must vent. For example, I tend to be really ominous when I brag about successful patrols, and insist in every officer having a sword. Make that an order: every officer must wear a sword when in service. You may choose your own weapon and the ones of your ship, as long as they are one-handed and curve." That explained the swords, at least. "Then we have Sheridan and his habit to hold speeches at the mirror, Panaccio and his 'lax' enforcing of fraternization rules, and so on.  
"We are often away from our bases, and having 'quirks' and not bottling everything up is necessary. So when high command send us new people we drench them in stinky beer and see if they show how pissed they are, if they don't we demand a replacement."  
"But we've been tested before assignment!" captain Best of the _Agamemnon_ protested.  
"We don't like unnecessary risks." commander Lopez of the _Captain Charles Johnson_ stated.  
"And once again, apparent folly is revealed as the mask of the geniouses." Clark declared. "Geniouses that have just saved my life!"  
Everyone turned to the Secretary of Defense, wondering about how they had saved his life.  
"I control the ship production, and got trouble from a lot of sides." he started explaining. "The Logistic Corps want more tenders, either by giving them back the ones of the Ark Group or by increasing the production of new ones. Fleet wants a greater warship production and that I commandeer all the civilian yards for the job. The Belters aren't complaining for more gunships, but they want more Skylarks. They were driving me to suicide!  
"And captain Panaccio and his crew solved my problem. The allies are making the Ark Group superflous for this war, so when the tenders return from this batch of civilians Logistic Corps will have them back. For the rest... Ever heard of dilithium?"  
"A lithium-like element found near quantium-40 ore suspected to be used by the Centauri in their antimatter engines." a random chief engineer replied. "We have a big stock for trade with the Centauri."  
"We have no use for the thing, and a lot of it. The Federation use it in their antimatter engines, and pays well for it. It lost some of its value a few years ago due the discovery of some regeneration process, but they can't regenerate it all, and Panaccio could negotiate a trade with them: dilithium for their own copies of the Skylark."  
"Yes, but it will take a while, I think..." Panaccio replied.  
"They just brought here the first batch of one hundred vessels. Their industrial production is just that great. And we could pay for those with just five hundred tonnes of dilithium!"  
"That's why they felt able to take on both the Klingon and the Rihannsu at the same time!" one of their officers cried.  
"Exactly! Between the Federation-made ships and the decreasing losses the Belters will have all the merchantmen they want, and we'll be able to produce more wars-"  
The Secretary's communicator chirped. Whatever he was told, it was bad, according to his ashen face and whisper of "Not now! Not yet..."  
"What's happening?" McDowell asked.  
"The Minbari have found Earth. Branmer is arriving with everything he can muster."

_Author notes_

According to JMS, Minbari ships are built so much slower than humans that without the stealth technology Earth would have won the war by simply outproducing the Minbari, literally burying them under a mountain of corpses.

Yevgeny Podkletnov is a real-life scientist. More information on him on Wikipedia.

The Reggimento Corazzieri is the honor guard of the Italian president of the republic. Given their regiment is part of the Carabinieri (the military police-gendarmerie) and they are all BIG, it's better not pissing one of them off.

This of Valen being Sinclair's nickname in the war was my idea. I just have no idea where the name Valen comes from...

Here comes the Lions of the Night. This is my take on _Star Trek_ the Kzinti: smart, even fun when they are out of combat, taking care of telling their children that 'scream and leap' is a BAD tactic as proved against the Federation, and liable to eat you alive if they can get away with it (and they know where to search for a snack). The complete test of the 192nd Rule of Acquisition here is "Never cheat a Klingon... Unless you can get away with it. But never cheat a Kzin: you'll just provide the excuse to eat you he's waiting for".

_Ingata_ and _Dogato_ are two ships actually appeared in the series: _Ingata_ is the ship Neroon used for Branmer's memorial tour (according to the on-screen data it was 500 meters long and massed 200,000 tonnes, so it couldn't be an actual _Sharlin_, but was quite overgunned for any _Leshat_ variant), while _Dogato_ was Sheridan's flagship at Sector 83 during the Shadow War.

The lack of full unification among humans comes from the GDR (it tends to contradict itself on that point, but most of the times it says that humans are not fully unified). From what I've been able to gleam, the independent countries are mostly small city-states including Vatican City (which is functionally part of Italy, a member of the Earth Alliance, and mostly serves to show that the Pope is politically neutral), but there are also South Korea (that skirts some of the economic pressure from the Alliance thanks to trading agreements with Japan and other nations of the Pacific Ocean), South Africa (that seceded from Earth Alliance when it was about to collapse, not counting on first contact with the Centauri and the political changes that reinforced Alliance's cohesion) and Israel (that literally walled off the rest of the world after terrorists used a nuclear warhead), the latter three of which have put together their own interstellar flight ability (with Israel actually colonizing the planet of Jericho). Apart these countries there are other non-Alliance humans, residing on Regula 4 (the system is claimed by both Earth and Centauri, and a group of humans created their own colony with their own laws, language and units of measure), the Sh'lassan Empire (two worlds, discovered by Earth Alliance in 2248. Joined Earth Alliance in 2259, after general Franklin helped the Empire dealing with rebels) and the Free Human League (three former Centauri worlds, colonized by people dissatisfied with Earth Alliance policies and a few Centauri exiles arrived after Earth and the Centauri Republic found out about them).

The Romulan ambassador is Arrhae i-Khellian t'llhweiir, from the _Rihannsu_ novels. Yes, I know who she _really_ is, but she always tended to get in-character a little too much...

Just to explain what happened to Xindi and Denobulans. I _had_ to make the Denobulans the ones who wanted to start biological warfare first: even in the TNG movies the Romulan military has been very reluctant to commit genocide (the Tal'Shiar isn't part of the military), to the point of turning on Shinzon as soon as they realized he wanted to commit one. That, and there must be a reason if the Antarans didn't fight the Denobulans again after their last war in spite of hating them so much...

Yes, the Soul Hunters are implied to have stealth technology more advanced than the Minbari's own: Jankowski's ships could detect something of the Minbari ships, but didn't notice the Soul Hunters. It's just bad luck that the Minbari were able to detect them, causing their reaction and Jankowski's panic.

Fun fact: most pesticides are nothing more than low-potency chemical weapons, and some of the most terrifying nerve agent were discovered in the attempt of producing more powerful pesticides.

The kaiguntō is a kind of katana-looking Japanese sword mass-produced from 1934 to 1945, issued to Japanese naval officers. It's not a true katana or even a traditionally-made Japanese sword (and thus can be confiscated in Japan, even if it's a valuable collectible in other countries), but the handle and the guard are closely modeled after tachi swords of the Kamakura period. Sheridan must have had that custom-made or bough it by someone who had...  
Simple fact: some of the dilithium of _Star Trek_ warp cores is lost as trilithium resine and ilium-629, and recrystallization won't recover it. As long as it's used in warp cores, dilithium will never lose all of its value.


	5. Io

Here starts the Battle of the Line. And not just that.

by lord Martiya

**03: Io**

Bridge of EAS _Medea_, Io Jumpgate Area.  
"You have to be shitting me..." lieutenant Hasegawa complained.  
"What's up, this time?" Blazic asked.  
"We are the Long Range Strike Force, the last elite formation of the Space Force. We are specialists in showing up in Minbari space and blowing shit up, for the first time in the war we are at nominal strength even with the heavy warships, and we're stuck here guarding the gate! And we're supported by that bad joke that is the South African Aerospace Force, the Belters and a bunch of _Epimetheus_! And what the hell is the _Mompracem_ doing here?! What's happened to _Sahaquiel_?!"  
The first officer sighed. At least this one complainer would listen and calm herself when the explanation was good...  
"_Sahaquiel_ got unlucky." he replied. "Pike was on the way back when he saw a French in hyperspace near Minbar and decided to take that one down. His last report mentioned the French captain identifying as Alyt Neroon of the defended scout cruiser _Ingata_ and a volley of incoming missiles.  
"The _Mompracem_ was selected because the crew was on the _Gato_ at Cooke."  
"The same _Gato_ that railed Branmer while escaping in hyperspace using his own vortex?!"  
"The one and only. Earthforce command moved her madmen on the first railcruiser available and retrained them to do the job precisely to fill a vacancy in the LRSF. They were actually supposed to replace _us_, but we returned, Pike got unlucky on the way for the new sensors, and here they are.  
"On why we're here, it's McDowell's idea. I don't know what, but she was cackling all the way, so I think the Minbari won't like it.  
"On the _Epimetheus_, they are Epsilons, the _Herakles_ subclass. Gammas and Deltas would be next to useless against the Minbari, and the Minbari have so little sense of humour that Alphas and Betas can't kill them with too much laughter, but the Epsilons carry two class 1 railguns each. And you know how much the Minbari love railguns. Plus, they're not the main support. Nor the Israeli and the Koreans. If the Minbari fighters break though the Belters will once again show how good their ships are at killing fighters, and if the Minbari warships come too near they'll have to deal with _Komo Val_, USS_ Jupiter_, USS _Antarctica_, EAS _Santisima Trinidad_, EAS _Commerce de Marseille_ and EAS _Iwami_.  
"And the South Africans are here so that their turtles won't be in the way of the main fleet, while here they can fight and shield the stations."  
"Serves them right, those traitors..."  
"At the time secession looked like a good idea." Panaccio interjected. "Earthforce still had to absorb most of the national militaries, and a few countries had enough nukes to overwhelm Earthshield. Without the Centauri World War IV would have erupted in a week, and if they weren't targets there was a chance for Mankind to survive.  
"But the Centauri arrived right as they declared their independence, the provinces of the pre-Union South Africa decided to reject the Senate's offer to forget the thing and recreated the old Republic, and got served when they noticed how little trade they had. At least now they're about to rejoin...  
"And don't sell them shortly: they didn't tell the people for political reasons, but they were magnificent convoy escorts in the Dilgar War, and took down one Sekhmet."  
"A what?"  
"Dilgar _Dominant Destiny_-class testbed cruisers, reporting name Sekhmet. They were the prototype of their next generation of warships, the one supposed to take on the Centauri, and had cutting edge technology: their best pulse weapons, ion drives and armour, captured Hyach medium lasers, sensors and gravitics, Abbai sensors, gravitics and _five_ shield generators, an actual quantum singularity as main power source, no idea where they found it, and, to cut costs, standard plasma cannon, missiles and anemic jump drive. Outgunned everything we had save for the _Novas_, and could outrun or kill from range our dreadnoughts. They built twenty of those during the war, and wasted the resources to build enough standard ships it cost them Balos and the war: they couldn't survive two starship nukes or a volley from a _Nova_."  
"And the South Africans took one of those down?"  
"Final Balos: one of those decided the International Battlegroup was an easy prey, with the Israeli and the Koreans decimated by the first two battles and the South Africans crappily equipped, and next thing they knew their fighter support had discovered why they're called Raider Hunters and the Cheetahs had nuked away their shields and half their armour. The last Korean cruiser and the _Tikvah_ finished her off, but it was the South Africans to do most of the job and lead the Battlegroup, and Deathwalker was running from _them_ and the _Lexington_ when _Nemesis_ killed her."  
"She's still alive." Blazic declared.  
"The day you'll stop with the conspiracy theories will be the day you'll get a ship. At least Vandom's not here, this time..."  
"No theory, fact. I was with the guys that recovered her ship, and somebody hit her hard after _Nemesis_ mission-killed her."  
"Hadn't been a very pissed Hyach dreadnought?"  
"Officially. Unofficially we had no idea what had hit the ship 'till we saw what the _Black Star_ had done to our ships: it was neutron lasers. Wanna bet the high command had found out faster and was sending those missions toward Minbari space to ask them about Jha'dur?"  
For a moment nobody spoke. Then Panaccio replied.  
"Another government screw-up..."  
"What screw-up?"  
Everybody groaned. It was an open secret that Mina Vandom was a member of the Earthforce Internal Affairs sent there to keep an eye on Blazic, and that she would have no qualms at ruining anyone's post-war career. Blazic had already risked that time he had commented on the railcruisers being designed with orbital bombardment in mind over the name of the subclass' lead ship, the _Sahaquiel_ (he had got the reference even before the War brought the _Evangelion_ franchise back into mainstream), and escaped a career-killing report only by pointing out that it was obviously an idea of the engineers at Karmatech, and now, apparently, it was the captain's turn.  
"Martian ecology." Panaccio replied. "You know why we Martians tend to not trust the Earth government?"  
"The Dome One bombing and John Carter's death?" Vandom replied.  
"That's old story, and the government punishing the terrorists by exiling them on Mars was a good move. My family still keep a couple ribs grandfather 'found'. No, we from voluntary families don't like the government for extraditing on Mars a metric crapton of people, ruining our economy as we were creating it and the balance between people and food production, and the fact many of that crapton of people were political fanatics or criminals that created a fucking _Mafia_, the honest half of the exiles and their descendants don't like Earth because they're underclass, nobody like the fact we depend from Earth for food, and my relatives hate the government for not bringing down the Mafia that ruined our small company, and only tolerate me being in the military because my pay was the one thing that saved them.  
"Let me tell you one thing: without the new sensors the Martian Senate wouldn't have pledged support to Earth Alliance, and they would have probably declared their neutrality as soon as the Minbari were here as a last fuck you to Earth, and this state of things will continue until we can produce our food and the Mafia is neutralized like back in Italy and New York."  
"And your opinion?"  
"No opinion, facts: the nations of Earth did a mess with the extradition policy, and the Senate is trying to clean it up as well as they can, but food production and terraforming need time, and until then taking down the Mafia is a dream, and with the current rivalry the Senate won't give us equal membership. Unless the allies have better terraforming technology than us, I fear I won't live long enough to see the Mars Colony become the Martian Confederation and our senators gain a vote... Now, what are you doing here?"  
Vandom suddenly remembered she was the chief engineer and the boss of the ship's quartermaster first and an Internal Affairs spy second.  
"Just reporting that we've been resupplied with weapons. We're at nominal capacity with both slugs and mines, including a couple with W2247 warheads." Vandom replied.  
"W2247?" Panaccio asked.  
"New strategic device, put into production while we were away. According to the file, the yield is 507 megatons."  
"Why do we even _need_ that thing?" Hasegawa asked.  
"McDowell's gone homicidal, and it's years that Earthforce command believed the W2203 to be underpowered." Panaccio explained.  
"It's 120 megatons!"  
"And the Dilgar used gigaton-yield warheads. Now let's hope that the Israeli get back soon and didn't screw up..."

* * *

_Valen'tha_, near Jericho. Assembly point of the Avenging Fleet.  
"Warleader, what happened?" Jenimer, the acting leader of the Grey Council asked.  
"Jericho was deemed secured, and the garrison included a single warfrigate from the secondary forces of each Caste. According to the records we recovered, what appeared to be Belt Alliance gunships emerged from hyperspace and overwhelmed the frigates' point defence with missiles armed with nuclear weapons." Branmer replied. "After our ships were no more capable of recording, the supposed Belters placed a defence grid in orbit and resupplied the colony with food and atmospheric processors before leaving."  
"Belt Alliance gunships are too weakly armed to defeat warfrigates, even with secondary crews." Satai Coplann pointed out. "Another Earthforce trick?"  
"Israeli Space Defence Force, the owners of this colony. According to Jha'dur's data the Belt Alliance use modified copies of their ships, and Israel has a long tradition of using captured enemy equipment, like the Thoruns that supported the attack."  
"Will they be a danger?" Satai Morann asked.  
"Maybe. They are well trained, but during the last war they tended to lack discipline. What will I do if they join Earthforce in battle?"  
"_Protection."_  
Everybody turned to the whispering voice, and instinctively bowed to the two Vorlons.  
"_The interference must be removed. The Circle must be restored."_ they said, with the Council bowing in obedience.  
"Can you prove you are Vorlon?" Branmer asked.  
"Come again?" Satai Dhaliri of the Workers, the decane of the Council, asked.  
"The looks of the Vorlons are known, and when the Dilgar started their genocide the Humans stopped them like true bringers of Light. What if this war was a machination of the Shadowsouled to take away our natural ally before the Shadow War?" Left unsaid, and unnoticed, was Branmer's hope they couldn't prove it, so that they would avoid any more unnecessary deaths, on both sides.  
Said hope was smashed when the Vorlons' encounter suits opened, showing the angelic figures of the Vorlons.  
But why? Why they had to fight their natural allies against the Dark? Why this foolishness? Those were the questions tormenting Branmer. Those, and Jha'dur's question.

* * *

"Two Sahaquiels..." Panaccio whispered, half-pissed and half-admiring. "They took down three whites, placed their satellites, resupplied the colony, and they only lost two of their Thorun copies..."  
"Sorry?" Hasegawa asked.  
"The Israeli. They pulled it off, and lost just two fighters. How is it even possible?!"  
"Dumb luck?" Boothroyd replied. "I mean, the Minbari had the sense to keep moving even before Sheridan nailed their boss, Bruman must have placed there a group of no-brainers he didn't want in his way, and last time I saw a Minbari with two or more braincells staying still was when we blackmailed them."  
"Blackmail?" Hasegawa asked.  
"First sortie after the Starkilling, you were still in the academy." Panaccio reminisced. "Anyway, we had checked out Drala Toth, and this Gray, the _Cathrine_ or something like that, popped out, we had the jump engines recharging... And we hailed them, told them we would open fire with the railguns, and that if we missed them our shots would have hit the planet. You can guess how they reacted. For some reason, the rest of their people hate this ship almost as much as the Lady Lex..."  
Hasegawa laughed herself silly, at least until Blazic called out their new orders: "There's a Gray out there asking for somebody to take the trash, McDowell is sending out us, _Jason_, Hippie and _Mompracem_ escorting the USS _Star Empire_. Lord, you're in command."  
"Crap on a stick... Name of the dustman?"  
"_Peace Through Firepower_, of the Wind Swords."  
"Great... She couldn't give us Sheridan, could she? OK, let's go."

* * *

The four cruisers and the Federation starship easily met the Minbari vessel, who had stayed still in the Oort's cloud while running ID. Upon their arrival the Minbari ship opened gunports while keeping all weapons uncharged and the stealth off. The only unusual feature of the vessel was a huge pod kept near the ship by a tractor beam.  
"This is captain Lucio Panaccio, of the EAS _Medea_. We've been told you have a deliver for us." the captain said as soon as they were in place.  
"_This is Alyt Duval, of the Wind Swords, with the battlecruiser _Peace Through Firepower_, also of the Wind Swords. We are here to deliver the trash that dishonoured our name and that of the Minbari to murder the world of Nimbus III."_ the Minbari commander replied. _"My orders are to give them to representatives of the United Federation of Planets, the Klingon Empire, or the Rihani Star Empire. Please take the trash pod."_  
As Duval spoke, _Peace Through Firepower_ moved the pod toward the _Star Empire_, which took it with her own tractor beam.  
"_This conclude our mission. We will be on our way."_ Duval said over the communication channel.  
"You don't care of what happen to them? They are still your people, or at least used to be." Panaccio asked, curious about that.  
"_We have already exacted the maximum price allowed by our laws. Minbari doesn't kill Minbari. That's why they were still alive when your allies demanded them."_  
"I understand. Good travel."  
The Minbari warship didn't reply, simply opening a jump point and leaving.  
"Scan that thing." Panaccio ordered.  
"There's a few thousands hibernated Minbari." Hasegawa replied. "And the atmosphere is saturated by air fresheners."  
"So the Minbari _do_ have a sense of humour... We shouldn't have scrapped the older _Epimetheus_. Mr Boothroyd, open a jump point and bring us back at Io."

* * *

Augmented scout cruiser _Ingata_, behind Sedna.  
Alyt Neroon observed the timer. By now, the Earthforce and Federation ships had returned their base, and he wouldn't violate the parley by leaving his hiding place and execute his mission.  
When the ship was in position, Neroon used her powerful sensors to map the system. And noticed that something was out of place.  
"The Io beacon is near Earth, Pluto's beacon is at Io, and the others are scattered... What are you trying to do, Humans?" he wondered out loud. He was curious to see it... And not nearly suicidal enough to actually spring the trap. The fate of the _Drala Fi_ was still fresh in his mind, and Sheridan had used older and weaker nukes than the current Earthforce standard.  
Anyway, he had done his job and the jump drive was charged. Better join the main force before he had to deal with the Human retaliation...

* * *

EAS _Poseidon_, Earth orbit.  
Alarm claxons were bragging on the Earthforce flagship when Lefcourt reached the main bridge.  
"Report!" he demanded.  
"We've detected a powerful tachion scan from Sedna. The new sensors identified a French, who has already ran. Hyperspace probes are detecting a numerous Minbari force aiming for us... They've split a detachment moving to Io."  
"Activate the jammer. All fleet, moving against the Minbari, and launch the signal."  
It was a pre-recorded signal, inspired by the president's speech the previous day. It derived from Nelson's famous signal at Trafalgar, and short and to the point.  
"Earth expects all people to hold the line".

* * *

For the first time in weeks, the cruiser _Memenda_ activated her antimatter-powered warp core. The signal had come, and stealth wasn't a necessity anymore. As her warp core started generating its immense power, the ship trained her disruptors upon her first targets – a _Naith'val_ battleship, a _Galneth_ carrier, and their escort of _Jashin_ destroyers who had the bad luck to sail over her hiding place.  
As the ships on the surface started detecting the ship, her commander gave her orders.  
"_Hyaa-aifv-hnah._"  
The first shots of Operation: Spanking had been fired. Trust the Federation to find such an irritating name...

* * *

Battlecruiser _Babylon_.  
The main Minbari force had jumped out behind the inner asteroid belt, waiting for his signal to attack.  
"Open a channel to Earthforce." Branmer ordered. "I am Shai Alyt Branmer, Warleader of the Minbari. I am here to put Mankind under Protectorate of the Minbari. I ask Earth Alliance and the other nations of Earth to stand down and not force me to kill their soldiers, and the aliens to leave this area of space. Failure to comply shall result in a battle you can't win."  
The first answer came from Mars. Branmer hoped they were surrendering. After all, Mars and Earth were known to be at knife point...  
"_Screw you and the ship you rode in!"_  
Branmer took a few moments to remember that Human culture had a taboo against public sex. Then came the answer from Earthforce and the aliens, an old and apparently angry song. Cultural data taken from the occupied worlds identified it as _40-1_, a song about a battle in which a force outnumbered by almost sixty to one and outgunned by a larger margin held the line for three days before running out of munitions and being exterminated (for a moment Branmer wondered why the authors had called it _40-1_, but it wasn't the moment). That the enemy stopped for three days was Nazi Germany, the very definition of evil in Human culture (with the Dilgar coming close second and, sadly, the Minbari about to take the top), was a clear message of defiance.  
"All ships, advance." he ordered.  
The Minbari fleet started advancing, avoiding the asteroid belt and any possible trap.  
As the two fleets advanced to meet, _40-1_ ended and was replaced by _La Marseillaise_, whose bloodthirsty lyrics, and the fact that some ships weren't broadcasting recordings but their own crews singing, made even clearer at which point the Humans had been pushed.  
As his fleet entered the area where the most powerful hyperspace jammer ever fielded by Humans until now had its effect, Branmer ordered the assault on Io to start.

* * *

Workers Caste warcruiser _Drala Toth_, near Io.  
Shai Alyt Zaca observed the defences of the jumpgate area with worry. His force, assembled from all Castes and given to him with his rank due his hard work at training his crew even before Branmer's started demanding higher standards from everyone, included twelve warcruisers, twenty-four _Tinashi_ warfrigates, six _Esharan_ point defence frigates and, at their operative debut in this war, six _Letann_-class scout frigates, whose sensors were a match for the smaller and faster _Leshats_, and just one month earlier would have laid waste to the Human defenders. Now, however, the enemy could track them, and they had assembled a powerful force.  
The sensors showed thirty Earthforce cruisers and five Vegan Hammers, as they knew that dreadnought variant encountered only at Vega until now. Alongside the stations, they with their starfuries of the Aurora and Muskrat type would have been the hardest enemies. Separated from them by a minefield detected by the scout frigates and a group of combat satellites, the more numerous Belt Alliance escorts would have been the lesser enemy, given the short range nature of their weapons and the weakness of their hulls, save for the ships mixed with them, _Epimetheus_ Epsilons, an older variant of killships: the killships would have provided long range fire, and the formidable point defence of the Belt Alliance ships and their fighters, both the typical Starfoxes and Delta V variants already encountered and the Vipers and Storms they identified from data taken on the captured colonies, would have covered them from his Nials and combat flyers. Finally, separated by another minefield and group of satellites, they could see what they identified as the fleets of the three so-called Holdout Nations, all grouped by nationality and guarding a particular sector in an obvious set-piece tactic: one fleet would conduct an holding action in its sector and the other holdouts, supported by killship fire, would have rallied to reinforce.  
Too bad he had planned to attack from six different directions even before Branmer suggested it, with his own group, part if the Workers' contingent, taking on the South Africans. Who, sadly, had changed designs from the ones in his data. He'd have to see what they could do... And show them the one advantage the Worker Caste fleet had over the Warriors and Priests.  
"Fighters, open me a path." he ordered.  
A few moments later, his Nial fighters, crewed by Fire Wings Clan Warriors like most but equipped as proper of Workers combatants, fired their missiles against the South African stafury-like fighters. And not just the old Shokrai universal missiles the Warriors and Priests clung to, but the state of the art Rha'vish anti-fighter missiles. As their Earthforce counterparts always did when confronted with Minbari missiles, the South African pilots activated their countermeasures to fool the radar and heat-seeking Shokrai... And lost 52 fighters to the 54 missiles fired: the Rha'vish supplemented the other sensors with gravitic ones that couldn't be fooled by anti-radar chaff or infrared-confusing flares, and their manouverability was increased by manouvering thrusters copied from Narn Ta'lon export missiles, themselves crude copies of older Earthforce missiles. Adding the surprise that these missiles weren't fooled as easily as the Shokrais, it was a minor miracle that two of the targets survived.  
The Human retaliation was devastating: from what Zaca could see the South Africans had no interceptors and relied on the less accurate standard particle beam as point-defence guns, but supplemented them with huge numbers of missiles, slaved to the sensors capable of penetrating Minbari stealth and equipped with proximity fuzes and fragmentation warheads (something the Workers was trying to re-develope since the invasions of Vega and Cyrus had showed their lethality against fighters, as the atmospheric friction generated enough heat to negate Minbari stealth). Of fifty-four Nials in his squadron, not one survived the barrage of ship and fighter-launched missiles, dying even as their missiles took down four other fighters.  
Still, he had a job to do.  
"Kill the Human ships." Zaca ordered, even as his ship shook under the killguns and the heavy particle lasers of the biggest South African ship. He could read her name, and see it was a variant of the _Orestes_ monitor. "Fusion cannons, anti-missile fire at will. Main gun, kill the _Nelson Mandela_."

* * *

"And that is why you shouldn't send an _Orestes_ against the Minbari." Panaccio stated as the overpowered main gun of a _Sharlin_, believed to have been developed to fight a First One race, melted its way through the armour of the South African flagship and hit the fusion reactor. "That gun will destroy the fusion reactor so fast that it won't even go nuke.  
"Mr Rvail, do we have a firing solution for the lead Royal?"  
"All forward railguns, sir." the one Thetan (or Vakeshin) crewman of the ship replied.  
"Fire at will."  
The Thetan, considering himself a honorary Human like most of his race, grinned savagely before opening fire.

* * *

The _Drala Toth_ was physically pushed back by the Human rounds, three shots coming from the hated _Medea_ and much more powerful than the weapons of the _Epimetheus_ and the South Africans. Even worse than the almost crippling damage, the hits brought a very unpleasant information: the accursed killships had a greater range than anything in the Minbari arsenal, a range they couldn't exploit before due the stealth.  
As he observed the situation, Zaca cringed: in spite of the early losses, the South African fighters had carried the day, easily shooting down the remaining combat flyers with the most powerful fighter weapon the Humans had ever fielded and, after the point-defence frigate of his personal squadron had been destroyed by concentrated killship fire, savaged the other frigates with nuclear weapons. And he was getting off easy: the Religious Caste squadron attacking the Israeli had been overwhelmed and destroyed.  
On the other hand, the Koreans had smaller numbers and less powerful ships and fighters, and were trying to retreat inside the first minefield while pursued by the other Religious Caste squadron. He knew where to push.  
"Shai Alyt Shaka, lead the rest of the force against the Koreans, and prepare to take command at any m-"  
Zaca's last order was interrupted as the _Medea_'s second salvo, no longer impeded by armour, found its mark and destroyed his ship.

"Six Royals, twelve Whites, six Lanterns and six Leopards with Piranhas in sector white." Hasegawa announced.  
"Motherfuckers... They used tactics." Panaccio whispered before laughing. "Rvail, you think you can support them from here?"  
"Stations in the way, sir."  
"And that Klingon will have my head if we move without orders..."  
"Message from Kerla: cease jamming and enjoy the show." Blazic called out.  
"Right in time. Good."

As his warcruiser _Turval_ emerged from hyperspace with the second wave, Shai Alyt Shaka cursed the name of the Humans: Zaca had been a great leader for the Workers, a candidate to both the Grey Council and the post of Warleader and his death was a dire loss for the entire Federation. No matter, he would make sure his sacrifice had not been vain.  
"Scout frigates, mark all mines and satellites of the outer field. All guns, at my command, destroy them." he ordered.  
A few seconds later the mines and satellites, capable of wiping out his whole force, were destroyed by fusion fire directed by the scout frigates. It was the one reason they were there, after all, that and to try and detect the invisible warships. Then he noted something strange: the Humans had stopped jamming his sensors. He didn't like it.  
"All ships, activate stealth." he ordered.  
"_Shai Alyt, they break through i-"_  
The protest from Alyt Mayenn (Religious Caste) was interrupted by a strange noise followed by a loud bang: somehow, a stun grenade had appeared on Mayenn's ship.  
"By Valen... All Alyts, show yourselves to me!"  
Obeying their programming, the holographic rooms of the force showed him their interiors... Including the ones of the three ships filled by giant cat-like monsters. The allies of the Humans had the ability to teleport themselves and objects. And a fourth, the frigate _Unnamed One_, was making the same noise that preceded the flashbang on the _Valeria_.  
"All ships, activate stealth." he ordered.  
The stun grenade still appeared on _Unnamed One_, but wasn't followed by the cat monsters. Whatever technology they were using, the aliens couldn't teleport through the stealth device. Now, he had to finish his duty and euthanize the dead or dying crews of the boarded ships, before the monsters could use their weapons against the fleet.  
"To _Valeria_, _Vorrin_ and _Kanatai_: by order of Shai Alyt Shaka and authorization of the Grey Council, you are to scuttle yourselves."  
A few instants later the computers of the boarded ships accepted the emergency order and vented all atmosphere, killing all living beings on board before their singularities were filled with all the available fuel while their containment was deactivated, completely obliterating the ships.  
At that point he finally noticed the two ships emerging from Jupiter's atmosphere, presenting the 'saucer and sticks' configuration typical of Federation warships with some modifications: one, now retreating, was considerably fatter, and her saucer had been modified into an arrowhead, while the other, advancing toward his fleet, had five 'sticks', with the luminescent ones hidden inside two more massive ones. No guess on which ship had teleported the monsters in the fallen vessels and why she was retreating. But the other?  
The answer came immediately, when the ship started firing antimatter missiles at high rate at the same time the survivors from the Holdout Navies unloaded their anti-ship missiles. He could only curse, with one of the harshest words in the Minbari language: "Oh, castration..."

_Author notes_

The Belt Alliance (whose personnel is known as Belters) is a shipping union, born into early XXII century to help the asteroid belt miners to defend themselves from some Earth-based corporations trying to steal their claims and early raiders. After first contact with the Centauri, the Belt Alliance evolved from a paramilitary force to a proper trade union for independent traders and small companies, still keeping a paramilitary force (limited to small escort ships and light fighters by Earth Alliance law) conducing anti-raiders patrols and providing (paid) escorts to convoys or big trading ships at risk to be attacked by raiders. Note: the Belt Alliance main fighter is the Zephyr 109 (also known as Delta V), that they accidentally and indirectly provided to the raiders by licensing production rights to a few alien governments that sold them on the black market (Belt Alliance Zephyrs tend to be in a better state).

The _Epimetheus_-class jump cruiser is one of the early Earthforce warships and a contemporary of the _Olympus_, _Artemis_ and _Avenger_. Where upgrades managed to keep serviceable the two non-jump capable ships and the carrier, the _Epimetheus_ was obsolete by the end of the Dilgar War (the _Epimetheus_ Epsilon version was actually more powerful than the _Hyperion_ Alpha, but was plagued by the lack of fighters, poorer manouver ability and use of railguns in place of energy weapons), and all ships were retired in the following decade. Also, the ship was known as somewhat of a death trap due the Alpha and Beta version being slow and having a poorly chosen weapon suite and the bad performance of the EAS _Asia_ (Beta version) in the first engagement against the Koulani, and the Epsilon tended to suffer from underpowered reactors for the railguns and maintenance nightmares due the (failed) attempt to improve the reactor.

According to the RPG a 'Coalition of South Africa' based on modern-day South Africa and the neighbouring countries is a member of Earth Alliance, but _Babylon 5 Wars_ material mentions the Republic of South Africa as one of the remaining independent countries on Earth. This is my solution.

Earthshield is Earth Alliance's early defence grid, composed of laser-armed satellites devoted to shoot down intercontinental ballistic missiles. Originally built by the US before World War III (and the one reason the war didn't destroy the world, as they got rid of the first volley of strategic nukes and discouraged other attempts), it was given to Earth Alliance upon its foundation.

According to RPG material the leader of Mars' early colonists was named John Carter. He was fully aware of the strange coincidence, and didn't care in the slightest.

Note that this is Mars' situation before the end of the war. Mars at the start of the series come after the last fuck you before an end that never came, the Senate cutting off food from Mars and then having to quell the food riots with force and the dissolution of the elected Mars government, a minor insurrection (that most of Mars didn't support because the appointed Provisional Government had done a good job cleaning the mess), and a _major_ one after Clark upped the oppression and the entire planet, including parts of the Provisional Government and the garrison, rose to arms.

Israel has a good tradition of that. Most of the Russian-made tanks captured in combat during the Arab-Israeli conflict have been retired, but they still keep in service a good number of small arms (particularly Egyptian Beretta M951 pistols, as it's the service handgun of Israel), and part of their initial equipment during the 1948 war included Nazi German rifles and aircrafts.

Either Delenn is an exibitionist or the Minbari are much more relaxed than us when it comes to show sex, given how she didn't react to G'kar peeping on her and Sheridan in the series...

Little piece of news: the Badger starfury _never_ made on screen. If you go to the site B5 Scrolls you'll find out the heavy starfury appeared in the series is called Muskrat by the staff, while the Badger, designed for _In The Beginning_, looks more like a fatter Thunderbolt (see on Wikipedia the concept art at the Starfury page).

The Viper and the Storm are my additions to fill the Earth Alliance aircraft market. They can't compete with the more recent starfuries, but they can compete with the standard market Delta V, and that's what they had been made for (that and fighting raiders). They are in use to minor anti-raiders companies (their ships are Belt Alliance gunships with the interceptors replaced by standard particle guns and blast cannons and jury-rigged to transport fighters).

The _Orestes_-class monitor is Earthforce oldest ship class in service during the Earth-Minbari War and beyond, with the first ship entering service in 2130 as a dreadnought. Reclassified as monitor and relegated to system defence after the introduction of the _Nova_-class, the _Orestes_ is a powerful but slow and cumbersome ship. Apart the _Mandela_ (heavily modified by the South Africans), the versions in service during the war are the Gamma (armed with railguns and particle cannons in the front arc and plasma cannons to deal with any idiot coming too near) and the failed Delta (replacing all the plasma cannons with the energy-intensive guns of the _Nova_), with the Epsilon version being developed.

The Vakeshin are the inhabitants of the planet Kumlakshi (Theta II on Earth star charts), and the one reason Earth Alliance has adopted their own non-interference clause: Earth Alliance tried to establish peaceful relations with their main culture, the bronze age Empire of Keshkili, only for the cultural shock to cause a civil war and attacks from the nearby nations. After the Humans cleaned up their own mess, Keshkili was ruled by a puppet emperor taking orders by the Earth Alliance, the other kingdoms were too scared to try even look funny lest they earned the Wrath of the Star Gods, Human teachers started passing knowledge to the Vakeshin as fast as they can so they won't blow themselves up, and the Keshkili people started petitioning for Earth Alliance citizenship.


	6. Holding the Line

Warning: anonymous reviews requiring an answer will be cancelled. Please log in before reviewing.

by lord Martiya

**04: Holding the Line**

"What happened?! Who are you?!"  
Jha'dur sighed. Couldn't he stay unconscious for a while yet?  
"You have been wounded, and I am your doctor. Please stay rested." she replied.  
"You're not M-"  
"I am a genious of the medical science. I possess the medical knowledge of dozen races, including the Minbari. I was made a guest of your Clan specifically because my intelligence and knowledge surpassed those of the Minbari, and that was before I could learn the Minbari knowledge and improve beyond what is supposed to be possible to the Younger Races. You are my patient and will shut up and obey me, or I'll have to immobilize you."  
The wounded Warrior didn't object anymore.  
"What happened?" he asked.  
"You don't need to know, only to rest." Jha'dur replied, hoping that Shakiri, Ramoon, Turval or Shargoti would stop the emergency before another pass.  
"I am a Warrior!"  
"You are infantry, not tank crew or fighter personnel. Shut up and obey."  
The Warrior tried to rise, at which point Jha'dur grabbed a needle and punctured him, depriving him of the use of voluntary muscles.  
"My fellow medics, do you need help restraining unruly patients?" she asked out loud.  
The patients started behaving at once.  
"Note to self: teach this trick to as many doctors as possible as soon as this mess is finished." she declared.

* * *

Ra'vakt observed the start of the missile attack with glee. A former raider, he was one of those Drazi who had decided to defy the Minbari threat and came to fight for Earth Alliance, and had been assigned to replace a Secopex pilot drafted in Earthforce. He had been eager to fight: after all the Eurofighter Storm he had been given was as fast as the Cobra he used and slightly more manouverable, and the crystalline armour of Minbari fighters was weaker to the shells of his autocannons than to energy weapons. If you added the superior penetration of the rocket-propelled rounds (called 'bolts' for some reason) Earthforce had distributed for the battle, he expected it to be a cakewalk.  
Then the Minbari had attacked, and seeing what Earthforce identified as a second string squadron (not as good as the main fleet but still much better than the living targets of third string units) give an harsh beating to the Koreans had cooled his hot blood. He didn't want to fight them anymore, and the missile salvo was a gift from Droshalla.  
"Oh, bugger me..." he cursed as he saw how few missiles actually passed the barrage of point defence.  
Then the order came.  
"_Second line fighters, advance towards the enemy, and keep away from the Gray."_  
He was to charge the Minbari. That was something you should do with a starfury, faster, more manouverable, and with more missiles. But he had to forget his military record at the old base, and the recruiters redirected him to the contractors. At least he would stay away from the Gray, or _Shargoti_ using the actual class n-Wait, what?

* * *

Shaka felt strange. On one hand, he was happy to be alive, thanks to the surviving point defence frigates. On the other, he hadn't felt that furious in his life. Not even when he had the sense to check the Storm Blades orders and discovered Branmer didn't know about them, and that time he had clawed away the Storm Blades tattoos on his face in a fit. They would pay for scaring him.  
Then the frigate _Haza_ was destroyed by a particle beam fired from the second satellite line, while a similar beam narrowly missed his own ship.  
"Identify the source of the attack!" he ordered.  
His ship complied, identifying two satellites of new type and the weapon they used: a _Drazi_ heavy particle beam, of range and power _superior_ to the maximum power of a neutron laser.  
Also, the sensors warned him of a warship appearing from nowhere. It was an obvious Klingon design, but was much bigger and massive than those previously encountered, being about the size of a _Leshat_ hull, or the feared _Exploding Star_.  
The only good news was the arrival of reinforcements, two _Sharlins_ and one _Shargoti_.  
"Identify the new-"  
His orders were interrupted when the _Turval_ was crippled by a neutron laser in the gravitic fin and hit by various fusion beams from the reinforcements. Before he could demand an explanation, his eyes fell on the holographic representation of the _Shargotti_, bearing a writing in Human characters: EAS _Iwami_. That was the last thing he saw before the Klingon ship destroyed the _Turval_.

* * *

"Ok, what the fuck happened?" Hasegawa asked as a Gray and two Royals opened fire on the rest of the Minbari.  
"I'll give you a few hints." Panaccio replied, amusement in his voice. "The Japanese pre-dreadnought _Iwami_ started her career as the Russian _Borodino_-class battleship _Oryol_ before being captured at Tsushima. _Nuestra Se__ñ__ora de la Santisima Trinidad_ was the ship of the line with the highest number of guns ever, and served as the Spanish flagship at Trafalgar before being captured by _HMS Neptune_. _Commerce de Marseille_ was an _Océan_-class first class ship of the line, dubbed the finest ship of the century by her French builders before being seized by the Royal Navy in 1793."  
"Wait, didn't the Rihanh, Feddies and Klingon capture those ships?"  
"They looked around, took notes, and brought them to the prize court at Io."  
"Three working warships... How much were they paid?"  
"They had to bring gold from Earth to pay for those ships, as the crews didn't accept credits."  
Rvail cursed out loud in his native language.  
"Don't worry, our time will come."  
"Signal from _Thunder Child_: fly the red flag." Blazic announced. "What does it mean?"  
"Pirates fighting under the black flag will give quarter. Under the red flag, you'll either surrender or fight to the death. And with us continuing the submariners' tradition of flying the Jolly Roger after a successful patrol, McDowell turned the name in a codeword."

* * *

Everything was going according to Branmer's plan. The attack on Io served mainly to keep the Holdouts busy, trigger whatever trap that was there, and cover the probes with the wrecks of some of his destroyed ships. He had hoped the force would escape, or maybe even take control of the jumpgate, but the Klingon warship and the captured ships had a greater impact than his hopes. At least he knew to switch production from the Shokrai to the new missiles, and what the accursed Long Range Strike Force was up to.  
Branmer checked the range. They were almost into missile range.  
His ship shook, hit by a Hyach spinal laser. A ship from any other race would have been gutted. It was just too bad that 80% of the energy had been refracted into space, and what remained had little effect on the thick plating of heat-resistant crystal.  
The source of the attack, however, was not a Hyach heavy warship but an heavily modified _Nova_ that sacrificed the main hangar and ten of the main turrets for the spinal laser and what were probably huge coolant tanks. They probably found the laser on the battlefields of the Dilgar War and nicked it, but were unable to salvage the cooling system. Not a problem: the Minbari laser-resistant armour made a single spinal laser little more than an annoyance, and without multiple Hyach warships firing in the same spot or a follow-up particle beam (like in the neutron laser or the Centauri battle laser and derivative) even a _Leshat_ would resist without any loss of combat capability.  
More worrying was the other unique ship, a massive vessel with what appeared the forward sides of eight Human carriers strapped on the sides. If it was what he feared it was, it could rearm a lot more starfuries than anticipated. And nuke-armed starfuries weren't something he wanted to deal with.  
Branmer's musings were interrupted by the alarm about a missile attack, right on cue. He didn't even had to order the fleet on what to do, two years of battles against the Humans had dealt with most of the idiots in the main fleet.  
"Prepare for anything." he ordered when the missiles exploded just out of the point defence whips and diffused particles that deflected all active sensors, creating what was an effective blank wall. He knew about this trick of theirs (thanks to the Anla'Shok, of course. The Humans had used it a few times during the Dilgar War), but it was the first time they used the 'chaff missile' in this war.  
A few seconds later, multiple antimatter missiles from the Rihani and their allies pierced the blank area at the maximum speed, right as cruisers of the Rihani, the Federation and the Klingon appeared on the sides of his fleet and started firing their beam weapons.  
He didn't like the data on the enemy weapons. The missiles were of two different kinds: one, analogue to the one fired by _Exploding Star_ in the first encounter with the Minbari but loaded with more antimatter, kept matter and antimatter in various pellets until impact or proximity explosion, granting an high reaction efficiency (estimated around 60%); the other, bigger but more primitive, kept matter and antimatter in two blocks until initiation, with a lesser efficiency of the reaction (about 40%) and proportionally inferior power. Both types were far less powerful than the Narn energy mines, but were 100% reliable: where a similar barrage of energy mines would have seen most mines exploding early, all the missiles were exploding only when hitting a ship, activated by a proximity fuse, or intercepted by point-defence fire. The beam weapons were an even worse news: they were particle beams analogue to the Minbari disrupters, only they had a much longer range and power, giving them a punch similar to the warfrigates. And those shields gave them enough resistance to survive the few fusion cannons on the sides. The next ships of the Federation would have to correct that weakness, it had already cost them many ships rammed by Earthforce.  
He checked the distance again. Out of the sensor blank area, and at one minute to effective range from the enemy fleet vanguard. A vanguard composed mainly by _Epimetheus_ killships and _Orestes_ monitors, with some _Hyperions_ (killship version, he suspected) and five _Novas_. It wouldn't make sense: at that range a _Nova_ had to fire in laser mode, with well-known results. Unless...  
The killguns shots from the Human vanguard impacted his fleet, with the usual damage... And hit from station-type killguns, whose numbers and paths showed they had been fired from the _Novas_. And they were aiming at his carriers. With huge numbers of inbound fighters, both types of starfuries and two new models he suspected came from the aliens.  
Another killgun salvo, hitting many other of his carriers. And they were in neutron laser range.  
"Wipe out that vanguard."

* * *

"Fuuck..." starfury gunner Laurel Takashima cursed.  
"Did they leave some of the Eppies?" Susan Ivanova, the cynical pilot of her Muskrat replied.  
"A couple... The Hippies and _Novas_ are running. Damned boneheads... I had asked for Security!"  
Ivanova sighed. Both of them had been drafted earlier that year and placed as starfury pilots after the most basic training, and then on the _Poseidon_ after the Ark Group was deemed unnecessary and there was shortage of qualified pilots (the newest batch still needing a few days to be deemed combat ready). They had similar personalities, with the difference that Takashima tended to complain whenever she could, mainly that she wanted to be in the Security corps.  
"Think it that way: all love is unrequited unless it's for nukes, and we're about to prove it." Ivanova told them.  
"You forgot that love burns." Takashima replied.  
As they laughed, the squadrons of allied fighters met their Minbari counterparts, determined to prevent any attack against the warships. The Minbari Nials were faster and better armed and armoured than any starfury, but their armour wasn't enough to survive long against the pulse cannons, and the pilots had grown into bad habits during the war, making for a fairer fight than expected.  
On the other hand, the Federation Scorpio and the Rihan Deathsting fighters were a match in terms of performance and had the advantage of shields and superior firepower, and it was those fighters that were leading the allied squadron. They were more experienced at attacking enemy ships than dogfight, but they were still devastating, and, helped by anti-fighter missiles fired from the starfuries and directed by their launching ships and control shuttles, opened a path for the bombers. Not that all Nials died easily...  
"Laurel, we have a-" Ivanova started warning.  
"We _had_." Takashima replied after spraying a Nial with fire from the small rear-firing pulse cannons under her control. "Just deal with reaching the target, I deal with the idiots and the nukes."  
Ivanova didn't reply, just moved their bomber... Right in time to avoid the red laser/particle beam from an _Hyperion_ directed at a Minbari ship. The main fleets had entered firing range of each other.

* * *

"Come on, Urza, you're the best at this. After me, of course." Londo Mollari said to his old friend and fellow House Lord, Urza Jaddo. "They've just been tested, and they work magnificently, both guns and engines! In fact I was thinking about selling the design to the Royal Navy, when we get the stealth thing right..."  
"You really think our people will follow G'Sten's orders if I'm not here to confirm them?" Urza replied.  
"Good point... Let's go, then! Don't worry, I'll get a few of them for you too."  
"_Reaching assembly point. Prepare for combat."_  
"For the Republic!"

* * *

_Memenda_ shook lightly under the enemy counterattack. They had just torpedoed an Arc battlecruiser (confirming the existence of more _Black Star_ copies in the process) when a squadron of Piranhas (Nials) took off from the ground and opened fire on the ship, aiming at the nacelles. Weren't the Piranhas supposed to be fleet-only?  
"_Idhaile'edh: Pirdolph."_ the tactical officer announced.  
That explained it: the Rangers had joined the frame. But as long as it was their fighters-  
"_Temhlayyt: Gray Dolph, mne Dolph."_  
Why did she expect them to not keep ships around their base?  
"_Hyaa-aifv-hnah!"_ Charvanek ordered.  
Green lances of light darted against the four gunships, hitting only one as the others dodged. It would be an hard battle, unless...  
"_Mneanir-hhaemn voyyer sihaer."_  
She could almost hear the enemy cursing as she used the city near their base as shield: they missed, the city would be hit. If they stayed away from the batteries, they would win easily.

* * *

"Report." Shai Alyt Shargoti demanded.  
"The main line of defence and the Anla'shok are tied up with the enemy. We've lost contact with Shakiri, and confirmed Ramoon's death. Seven enemy ships, five of the smaller type and two of the bigger, are inbound."  
Shargoti smirked. Just like the ship he shared his name with, he was much more dangerous than a casual observer would think: if you didn't know what to look for you could easily mistake a _Shargoti_ battlecruiser could be mistaken for a _Sharlin_ until the gunports opened, and Shargoti was a Worker, so most people would be inclined to dismiss his military credentials until they saw he wore the mantle of former Warleader. And it appeared the enemy had just entered the number of people who underestimated him. After all, he was merely commanding the Valen's Eye shipyard full of incomplete or otherwise inactive ships, a point-defence frigate and a single new model armoured cruiser, how much dangerous he could be?  
"_Neshatan_, wipe out those interlopers."  
Very, if the armoured cruiser had more neutron lasers than the _Drala Fi_, as the first salvo demonstrated by cutting through the shields of both the bigger enemies and annihilating them.  
The smaller ships replied with their long range plasma weapons, only to see their bolts hit and brought down by the frigate's guns. Then the _Neshatan_ fired again.  
"One enemy ship vanished. The others are confirmed as destroyed."  
"Full power to long range targeting sensors." Shargoti replied. According to what little data they had, the enemy stealth was derived by that of the Soul Hunters, so there was a chance the gravitic and tachion sensors would detect them. If true... Well, the _Neshatan_ had more than enough firepower for any two ships of theirs, and he had a few surprises in his depots...

* * *

Branmer was nervous. In spite of the earlier fighter attack costing him over thirty ships and the constant hammering from the alien ships, he was winning too easy. True, a _Sharlin_ could take on five _Hyperions_ with particle lasers and win, and he was successfully keeping his ships outside of _Nova_ pulse cannon range, but it was too easy. When would they try and spring their trap, or send into battle the seven alien heavy warships?  
"_Hyperspace jamming ceased."_ a voice warned. Finally.  
"All ships, form the sphere." he ordered.  
At once his ships moved in a sphere formation, ready to take on the Long Range Strike Force whenever they would try and jump in for a surprise attack. He was almost laughing. Right until the sensors detected the thirty five jump points forming _inside_ the sphere.  
A few instants later the vortexes started smashing his warships before a single ship left hyperspace at high speed. Thirty _Hyperions_, and five _Nova_ of the variant with a rotating section only encountered at Vega before then, firing all their weapons at the Minbari fleet. And the dreadnoughts (or battlecruiser? They didn't have all the cannons of the standard model) had their missile silos open. And one was _near his position._  
"All ships, prepare for battlestar! I repeat, prepare for battlestar!"  
The missiles were launched.

_Author notes_

Secopex is an actual company. Google it.

The Cobra is the second most used fighter of the Raiders. An older Drazi design and inferior to the more recent Star Snake (a light fighter), Sky Serpent (a super-heavy fighter. It's slow and unmanouverable, but it's armed to a ridiculous degree and well armoured) and Star Cobra (a lighter descendant of the Sky Serpent, sacrificing some of the firepower and armour for better speed and manouverability), it's still better than the average Delta V. And much more expensive.

A prize court is a court or an individual authorized to judge if a prize (captured ship or carg) was seized lawfully or unlawfully during a war. Said court may order the selling of the prize (with a share being paid to the seizing crew until 1948) or, if the prize is considered seized unlawfully (the ship being from a neutral country and not engaged in supporting enemy war effort), its return to the previous owners.

Actual tradition, first started by the Royal Navy: First Sea Lord Arthur Wilson declared that submariners should be hanged like pirates, and the submarine HMS _E9_ returned home flying the Jolly Roger after sinking a German ship in World War I. Since then, British submarines that sink enemy ships are rewarded with a Jolly Rogers and are entitled with upgrading and flying them on the return from a successful patrol, being imitated at least by the Polish and Australian navies.

The RPG mentions the Minbari having a weapon called 'disrupter' with effects analogue to those of phasers and disruptors from _Star Trek_, only they are specified to have a very short range that relegated them to ground combat.

Yes, that's both the first two first officers of _Babylon 5_. When the war ends they'll have to return to the Academy, unless their commanding officer decrees otherwise or they decides to leave.

Here is the _Neshatan_, the Minbari answer to the _Nova_-class. Like the _Nova_, the _Neshatan_-class has more heavy weapons and armour than a ship of her size has any right to have (ten neutron lasers, two more than the _Drala Fi_) and is relatively fast to produce but is sluggish (for a Minbari ship, at least) and has weak point defence (five fusion cannons against eighteen for a _Sharlin_ and twenty two for the _Drala Fi_ and other _Shargoti_ variants). Also, the Minbari ship lacks any fighter complement, a result of her being quite smaller. Note that this is just the prototype: the source lists the class as entering service only in 2251, with enough time to work out the design flaws and put her into full production.


	7. Counterforce

The end of the Battle of the Line, with something not even Branmer saw coming so soon. And the Romulans finish with Minbar. By the way, if you google for 'rihannsu language' you'll find how to translate them.

by lord Martiya

**05: Counterforce**

EAS _Poseidon_  
"Code Abraxas, now!" he ordered.  
As all his ships with missiles fired the single largest nuclear strike since the Dilgar War (the missile cruisers having reloaded their racks with nuclear-tipped missiles) and the allied missile cruisers and ships of the line added their own torpedoes, he observed the state of the battle.  
Until the LRSF attack the Minbari were winning thanks to their superior long range firepower and speed. Now, however, target Arc was destroyed, hit by four missiles from _Emperor Julian_, the Minbari had suffered sudden and heavy losses from the missiles of the _Omegas_ and the mines of the cruisers (plus a few ships crippled or destroyed by freak critical hits from the more conventional weapons), the Minbari were desperately defending themselves from a missile strike equal to that unleashed on Jha'dur at Second Markab, and the main Earthforce fleet, assisted by three Klingon dreadnoughts, two Federation's and a Rihan one, were using the distraction to reach point blank range, where Earthforce ships and crews excelled.  
The fate of Earth and all of their branch of Mankind would be decided in the next minutes.

* * *

"Status report." Panaccio ordered.  
"Death roll successful, the entire force is active." Hasegawa declared.  
Panaccio allowed himself a laughter of victory. The Death Roll was one of the most suicidal manouvers in Earthforce book: placing the ship in a route of near collision with the target and accelerate to a point where the crew would black out while simultaneously rolling the ship while the computer fired the weapons and, at a pre-programmed point or moment, decelerated. It had been invented and first executed during the skirmishes with Centauri House forces back in the time House Jaddo had exclusive trade rights with Earth, and against the badly trained crews of the House Forces and their ships (antiquated for Centauri standards but still more than a match for the _Epimetheus_ Betas of the time, in a fair fight) the near-suicidal manouver had allowed more than a few victories, and it had worked well even against the Dilgar. Against the Minbari, however, the Death Roll had been a complete failure due the Minbari stealth, and had been quickly abandoned... Until the new sensors enabled Earth ships to finally hit the Minbari, as they had just showed.  
"Branmer got nuked." Hasegawa announced, provoking a loud cheer.  
"Good. Take position near the carriers, and fire on anything Minbari emerging from the melee." Panaccio ordered.  
"Why don't we get back in?" Blazic asked him. He really wanted to get back at the Minbari.  
"Two reasons. First, these are our orders. Second, we can do more damage rearming fighters and protecting the carriers while Joan Force and Archer Force arrive."

* * *

Since First Contact Earth had designed its warships and tactics for one kind of battle: extremely short range melee where the manouverability that Earthforce ships lacked wouldn't matter, only firepower to dish out damage and armour and other defences to take hits. In Earthforce history that kind of battle had happened only twice: at the Final Battle of Balos, where Hamato divided his fleet in task forces and threw it against Jha'dur in the desperate attempt to take down her ship before dealing with the Dilgar Grand Fleet piecemeal, and at Omelos, where the tactics of the Supreme Warmaster Gar'shan forced the Liberation Navy to engage the Dilgar in range of their orbital defence grid.  
Against the Minbari the tactic could have been devastating, except that the one attempt at doing it in the Battle of Vega had failed miserably: admiral Bohase had tried to get the Minbari in close quarters by hiding his force in the moons of the planet, but warleader Veroon had the sense of sending his Nials first, wiping out the surprised starfuries and using their awesome firepower to take down the guns of the Earthforce ships. Bohase had to to launch a desperate charge, resulting in his fleet wiped out at the price of a few Nials, a _Sharlin_ crippled by a lucky shot from an _Artemis_ and another destroyed when EAS _Leonov_ (one of the pre-production _Omegas_) survived long enough to ram her.  
This time, however, Earthforce had successfully closed range, and the Minbari were suffering for it. At that range the powerful neutron lasers, impervious to the dissipative effects of the E-web and whose effect was actually augmented by the armour of the older Earthforce ships, were useless, only the fusion cannons could be used. Particle pulses and plasma bolts shattered crystal armour and damaged systems, railgun shots wrecked warships, and starfuries launched missiles and shot cannons.  
It wasn't as easy as it had been with the Dilgar. Dilgar ships had always been thinly armoured to increase speed and manouverability, and in close quarters with Earthforce they fell easily. Minbari warships, on the other hand, sported thick armours to resist against the awesome firepower of the Shadows the few seconds necessary to hit them back and were kept mobile by the most powerful drives of the Younger Races, and said armour allowed them to resist and fight back. Also, the antimatter converters of the line cruisers may be a liability at such close ranges, but all ships of the main fleet had exchanged their combat fliers for increased loads of fighters, both the fearsome Nials and, in a bad surprise being sprung only now, Tishann torpedo fighters.  
"It will be difficult, but we will still win." Satai Coplann declared to the rest of the Council. "All we need to do is to stay coordinated in this gauntlet, and we will win."  
The _Valen'tha_ had survived the Death Roll of the Long Range Strike Force with minor damage, being only shot _en passant_ by EAS _Prometheus_' particle lasers and far enough to survive the nuclear mines, and was now serving as flagship, with Satai Morann, having the most experience in space combat, leading the battle in Branmer's place.  
"I repeat, do _not_ charge jump engines. It's a trap!" Morann ordered. Earthforce had stopped jamming hyperspace to allow for the LRSF assault, and had not resumed the interference. Either it was a trap, or the Humans were about to receive other reinforcements _and_ had a trap ready. He wasn't naive enough to still think the Humans would leave such an opening without trapping it. What was there? A minefield? A squadron of missile cruisers? A fleet of their allies? Then he noticed jump points opening behind them. "Rear ships, neutralize incoming enemy force."  
The rear guard was ready to blast into scraps the expected _Artemis_ corvettes, _Olympus_ frigates and the ships coming from Io that had just jumped. What they got was much nimbler and devastating, and thought to be just impossible.

* * *

"Do you like it, Boneys?!" Londo cried in glee. He was back in combat, against the bogeyman of the Republic, and had already shot down two surprised Minbari.  
The Humans had insisted for their unit to be called Joan Force, after a heroine in Human history that united the divided forces of a falling kingdom under her banner and led them to victory against an apparently undefeatable enemy. And what an appropriated name it was.  
The first ships emerging from hyperspace were Abbai vessels. Their lasers would be near useless against the Minbari, but the crucial feature in this battle were their shields, that repelled enemy fire long enough to protect the more fragile but powerfully armed follow-up ships: Sunhawks from the Drazi, Earth's staunchest allies and the ones who, alongside the Abbai, recognized the Dilgar as a threat before their grand offensive; armed saucers from the Vree, Earth's former protectors (why they did so only the Vree know); and, completely unexpected in a League force, _Vorchan_-class warships, _Demos_-class heavy warships and _Kutai_-class gunships from House Jaddo, the Centauri House that introduced Mankind to the greater universe, and House Mollari, House Jaddo's staunchest ally. The small vessels, all overgunned for their size, immediately started to take an heavy toll on the Minbari, particularly the Centauri ones: their extreme manouverability allowed them to easily dodge counterfire from the surprised Minbari gunners, while the plasma accelerators of the warships (whose power was almost four times the standard one of a neutron laser) and the matter guns (the Centauri counterpart to the railgun and the coilgun, almost on par with those of the cruisers) of the gunships quickly damaged and destroyed the Minbari ships, proving once and for all that the Minbari engineers knew what they were doing when they sacrificed armour for manouverability and guns.  
As anticipation of things to come, the fighters accompanying this squadron weren't just Abbai Kotha, Drazi Sky Serpents and Star Snakes, Zorth and Tzymm saucer fighters of the Vree, and the Sentri, Razik and Razarik of the two Centauri Houses, but also Shashi light fighters of the Balosians (who would never forget how Earth armed their surviving ships for free during the Dilgar War before rallying together the League and saving them from extinction), Falkosi and Pikitos from the Brakiri (Earth's main trading partner and a race who was on the verge of extinction from thirst when Earthforce broke the Dilgar siege and brought water), Drofta medium fighters of the Markab (who wouldn't easily forget what they called Hamato's miracle), the Delta Sentinels, MiG-1200s and Me-409 of the Free Human Union (more advanced variants of the Delta V, MiG-1200 and Me-409 available to Human contractors), what would have been identifiable as Eurofighter Storms except they were faster, armed with particle weapons derived from antiquated Centauri technology and painted gold instead than the customary purple (used to increase the resemblance with the Sentri and scare away raiders), and, unbelievable for a force including the Centauri, Gorith medium fighters from the Narn Regime.  
And, sure enough, the light ships were followed by the Centauri-made ships of the Balosians, the large green hulls of the Brakiri fleet (including one of a handful of _Corumai_-class dreadnoughts, hellbent on proving once and for all that the class was not a deathtrap), the FHU fleet of designs comparable to those of Earthforce and older Centauri ships of the renegade House Radda, gold-painted _Olympus_-like ships, and, as the heavy hitters alongside the Brakiri dreadnought, a score of _Primus_-class battlecruisers, a fleet of Markab ships from the military orders (the elite of the Markab military), and various Narn vessels. And all ships could see where the Minbari were, thanks to Earthforce _Oracle_-class scouts placed around the system and the old communication protocols created during the Dilgar War.  
And Londo was enjoying it as much as possible.  
"You know what, my lady? You're going to have assault fighters as children!" Londo said to his new fighter, faster and better armed than anything the Centauri had ever created before. He then noticed a Nial on his tail, and, with manouverability exceeding anything but the starfuries, pivoted before spraying his enemy with fire from his twin disrupters. A weapon that, ironically, had been reverse-engineered by data from the Minbari themselves. "Please, I'm an ace! You really expected it would work?" The Minbari pilot didn't reply. Dead can't talk. Then he noticed a group of Sky Serpents approaching a Minbari ship from behind. "Not from there, you fools! It's suicide!"  
The Sky Serpents continued their assault, and their pilots discovered the hard way that the drive fins of Minbari ships have a secondary function as heat radiator that, during battle, emit enough waste heat and radiations that no known fighter allowed survival.  
"Fools..." Londo commented. Not even the Narn, for all their beastly fury, were doing something that stupid. They did pay attention in the briefing...  
Finally Archer Force showed up: the ships that had defended Io had arrived, and with them the Badgers and the _Komo Val_. Minbari warships started losing their weapons at a much increased rate, while the Klingon dreadnought unleashed her fearsome firepower on any ship in range.

* * *

"Open immediately a communication!" Delenn ordered. She would find what was happening, and who had to be chastised among these intruders.  
"_I am ambassador G'Kar of the Narn Regime, Third Circle, and I speak for the crews and commanders of Joan Force."_ the intruders diplomatic representative answered. From the Brakiri dreadnought that was proving herself, no less. _"How may I help you?"_  
"Explaining this betrayal!"  
"_That would be the Narn question. Comparison of historical data from multiple races shows that the enemy that used our homeworld as base and exterminated our telepaths was your own enemy and that we helped you a great deal, yet you never send any help to us."_  
Delenn flinched. She didn't expect such an answer. She didn't even know that the Narn didn't have telepaths...  
"_But I digress. I suppose you meant why we are fighting against you."_ the Narn continued.  
"Of course. Why this foolishness?"  
"_Pre-emptive strike, of course. Some of us are Human renegades, and know they are next on your list. The Centauri Houses who sent their ships feel responsibility for this war, as without them introducing the Humans to the greater universe they wouldn't have met you as they did, or so they say. The rest of us, and the Centauri themselves, have agreed to give sanctuary to the Human refugees or otherwise helped their attempts at survival, and rightly fear you will extend your genocidal crusade to us. Is it that strange that we agreed to send our ships in battle once we knew we had a chance?"_  
"We have decreed to take Humans under protectorate!"  
"_So you say. But we feel we cannot trust you, not after you ignored all the desperate pleas of surrender from Earth Alliance. Unless you agree to the terms already given to you, we are to fight."_  
The Narn ambassador closed the communication with a smug look.  
"And now what do we do?" Satai Jenimer asked his peers.

* * *

Hidden by advanced technology and knowledge of the universe beyond what they Younger Races imagined, two alien ships were observing the unfolding battle. They were similar and different. Similar in that they were both organic ships. Different in that one was a magnificent flower with a bulbous stalk and the other was a giant spider plaguing the nightmares of countless billions across the galaxy. They were the two faces of the same coin. Order and Chaos. Light and Darkness. The transport of a Vorlon observer and the scoutship of a Shadow.  
Amused by the evolution of the battle, the nightmare decided to speak with the flower.  
"_What is your aspect?"_  
"_Kosh."_  
The Shadow liked the answer. Vorlons dominated by the Kosh aspect of their culture were teachers of the Younger Races, paternalistic but reasonable. As obsessed with Order like all Vorlons but capable to understand their role as tutors of the younglings, and willing to spank them when necessary. And this Kosh, while eccentric for any Vorlon standard, was known to be particularly dedicated to the cause.  
"_Were the intruders influenced?"_ the Kosh asked.  
"_They are grey, not dark."_ the Shadow replied. _"They are the ideal of _your_ last nexus. We think we may return to sleep, or leave. What will you do?"_  
"_Kesh sings louder, and Uler sings with him."_  
To most members of the Younger Races these words would have terribly enigmatic. To Shadows and other First Ones, however, they were clear and crystalline as they were intended to, as they were to their servants. And this Shadow found them deeply amusing. Then they heard the call from Minbar.

* * *

The two-pronged attack, reinforced by Rihan, Federation and Klingon smaller ships hitting anything trying to bypass the gauntlet, was extremely taxing to the Minbari armada. More than one ship had been boarded by Drazi or Narn, and only the most recent (and the recently refitted _Valen'tha_) had the kind of sophisticated gravity control that allowed to crush invaders under their own weight.  
Even more, they were dealing with the shock of seeing other Younger Races, who they were long used to see as natural subordinates when the Shadow War would have restarted, allying themselves with their enemy and fighting against them. Before Branmer, and Veroon before him, used the War as excuse to enforce harsher training and discipline, the arrogant Minbari would have panicked and run. Now, they were fighting back with everything they had.  
"_We are receiving an emergency transmission from Shai Alyt Shargoti."_ a synthetic voice announced to the Grey Council before the holographic image of the shipyard commander appeared before the Greys.  
"_Where is Branmer?"_ he asked, the nature of the emergency allowing him to skip the usual protocol.  
"He's dead. The battle is being more difficult than anticipated." Satai Coplann replied. "What is the nature of this emergency?"  
"_Minbar is under attack."_ The shock prevented the Satais from saying anything. _"Ramoon is confirmed as dead, and Shakiri's ship was hit and heavily damaged. The Anla'shok have joined the battle, but the enemy is fighting hard, and many have fallen. Many shipyards, energy production facilities and ground communication ways have been hit, and major rivers mined."_ Shargoti explained. Then, almost in an afterthought, he added: _"The Eye of Valen is intact, and has repelled two assaults."  
_"Great... Valen... How did it happen?!"  
"_Transmissions from a guest of the Wind Swords have pointed out the first to be hit have been have been seaships. They probably hid there even before Kirk appeared for his ultimatum."_  
"Why weren't we warned earlier?!" Satai Solnier, the telepathic member of the Council, demanded to know.  
"_We've tried and failed to reach you since the attack began. We've only been able now by broadcasting on all frequenc-What have I done?!"_

* * *

"What the-The Minbari have just lost cohesion! It's like they're trying to run and escape!" Hasegawa cried.  
"There was some crypted transmission. I couldn't read it, it was a new scheme, but I bet it was involved." Blazic stated.  
"Don't know and don't care. Just shoot whatever comes through." Panaccio ordered nonplussed.  
"They've recovered some cohesion, but are still disengaging." Hasegawa stated.  
"Boothroyd, I want a course to the enemy as soon as we have the go."  
"Signal from the _Poseidon_: let them go." Blazic announced. "What the hell?"  
"You've heard Lefcourt: let them go. I wonder what he's plan-Oh. Son of a..."  
Panaccio had just remembered a particular piece of data. And laughed. Laughed like a madman, punching his chair. After a few minutes he recovered enough, and made his question.  
"Do we have any ship in L2?"  
"The _Gun God_, _Oracle_ Alpha-class." Hasegawa replied. "_Oracle_ ALPHA?"  
Her surprise was justified. The _Oracle_-class was first introduced in 2163 as a long range explorer (preceding most _Hyperion_ variants and the _Explorer_-class in the role), and while the current Gamma and Epsilon variants (the latter having just been put into production, with those in service being refitted Gammas or Deltas) was an effective scout the Alpha was useless against the Minbari, having a sensor suite inferior even to the Delta export light cruiser variant, a pitiful weapon package and poor thrusters. Also, if the _Gun God_ was still an Alpha it meant it had been damaged to much that Earthforce hadn't bothered to refit it into the Beta armed explorer version. Then she remembered what had just been moved there from L1, and joined her captain in laughter, the rest of the bridge crew following suit as soon as they remembered too.

* * *

In hyperspace the Grey Council was shocked and depressed. For the first time in a thousand years the Minbari had been defeated in a major battle, and the Younger Races, that they looked at for help against the Shadow for when they'd return, had fought against them. Worse, Minbar itself had been attacked, something not even the Shadows had ever done.  
"What do we do now?" Jenimer asked, hoping for ideas. He was the current leader of the Council, but he was not cut for it. Silence answered him.  
"Here they come..." Morann stated when the sensors detected a jump point opening. "Wait, that can't be right..."

* * *

The sensors indicated the jump point had been opened by a Centauri jumpgate. Had the Minbari intelligence done their work they would have known that the Sol System had _two_ jumpgates. The one normally used was the Io Gate completed in 2239, replacing the one built in 2215 (itself a replacement for the one built in 2198), but a previous one still existed, normally kept deactivated and used only when the Io Gate was to be replaced or for emergency purposes.  
Built by House Jaddo and originally placed in Earth orbit at L1, the Stargate had been sold to Earth Alliance in 2167, when Earth technology had proved capable of building their own jumpgates, and had remained there for almost ninety years, until Earthforce moved it on the other side of the moon as part of the defence plan against the Minbari.  
Now, imitating Gar'shan's devastating opening move in the Battle of Omelos, Earth Alliance used the Stargate to open a jump point... And then the remote-controlled _Gun God_, an explorer crippled in a raider attack in 2168 and reactivated only for this mission, opened her own jump point _inside_ the Stargate. The immense energies of the two vortexes collided and fought, before exploding with devastating power.  
Earth was protected from the explosion by the Moon, whose dark side war uninhabitated even by those Humans who dared to live there. The allied fleet, with the obvious exception of the damaged and uncrewed _Gun God_, was protected by distance. The Minbari fleet, however, had to deal with an hyperspace who had suddenly became much more hostile.  
Sol System was back to only one jumpgate. It was a small price for sating Mankind's thirst of enemy blood and dissuading future enemies from attacking Earth.

* * *

Londo Mollari winced as the light from the exploding jumpgate reached him. It seemed the Humans' hate for the Minbari was even greater than the hate of the Narn for the Centauri, or that of the Centauri for the Xon and the Shroggen, and they were just as thorough as Jha'dur had been at Mitoc.  
Then he noticed the Federation command ship USS _Inaieu_, the biggest vessel they had there, had not taken part to the battle in any way save for launching and rearming fighters in spite of being massively armed. Why didn't they risk her? Maybe the intelligence was right about her role. And as soon as he was reinstated as ambassador (his resignation having been a ploy to prevent the Republic from being dragged in if the Minbari still won), he could take advantage for it.

* * *

On Io Prime, defence secretary Clark allowed himself to smile. The Minbari had suffered a crushing defeat, and their other allies (at least some of them) had proved themselves trustworthy. He then looked at the list of ships in the ECS convoy, and hoped their cargo would be enough to make use of this window of opportunity.

* * *

Charvanek was checking the data on the attack. Of ninety ships in the raid, she had lost fifteen, nine of which to the new model armoured cruiser and the other defences of the shipyard. She had to retreat from Minbar due the defences finally coming on line (thankfully testing the new weapon on the main orbital base had delayed that. There was a lot of combat satellites, and they packed a nasty punch), but they had done a lot of damage. She was checking possible targets and the chance to use the entire force against that shipyard when the retreat order came.  
"Pelaere na nhhai." she ordered. It would be a show of force, just in case the Minbari had funny ideas, but it would be amusing.

* * *

The Warriors in Valen's Eye control room cheered when the intruders used their strange FTL travel to go away, but Shai Alyt Shargoti interrupted them.  
"They could return any moment." he warned. "We better stay on g-"  
"Enemy flagship near the sun."  
Once again Shargoti cursed the lack of an holographic control room on his station. When he proposed it the Caste Elders rebuffed him saying it was a waste of funds, so when this enemy attacked he had a lot of unnecessary delays at coordinating his ships. And now he couldn't just see what was happening on an hologram but had to move and watch the sensors.  
He observed the enemy ships reaching the sun in real time (thanks to the extreme range of their tachion sensors, not as accurate as those of the Hyach but still capable), and placing with the aft at it and the front at a point in space near Minbar. For a moment he thought they were about to ram the planet at high speed... Then the enemy started firing at the sun. And, before he could finish wondering what they were doing, the intruder left... And answered him when a solar flare _followed on his same course and at the same speed_, narrowly missing Minbar.

* * *

Jha'dur was tending a minor wound on a warrior. She had forgot how it feels actually doing her job, and she was wondering why she had stopped it for so long when there was a strange light.  
_Aurora borealis _here_? At the equator? What the hell is happening?_ she thought, and instinctively looked up.  
And saw that the entire sky was now in a giant aurora borealis. She didn't realize what was happening until a technician complained that radio communications were disturbed.  
"They can do it... They could have done it..." she whispered.  
She laughed at the folly of the Warmasters, including herself. Then she took the vial containing her artificial Drafa plague and threw it in the disrupter bin for disposal of infected material. After fifteen years she had a goal, and killing all the Markab in a way they could but wouldn't _want_ to stop, while darkly amusing, wouldn't do.

_Author notes_

Yes, I know that the _Omegas_ are not supposed to have entered service until a little after the war, but we also know from visuals that a variant was present in the Battle of Vega (seen in _In the Beginning_ being destroyed by the Minbari). Here the _Omegas_ were redesigned from long range exploration cruisers to battle-oriented vessels, and the ships being produced were supposed to be kept into reserve until either there were enough to fight back or, if Earth was destroyed, they would launch a retaliatory strike against the Minbari, and, had the war gone like in canon, would have been _unveiled_ only when there was both a sizeable number of them and the need of a show of force.

The _Corumai_ is the Brakiri answer to the _Nova_... And somewhat of a joke: the original _Corumai_ had many issues with powering all weapons and move (as they had put too many of those on the ships, leaving little space for the reactors and engines), and in the Dilgar War earned both a reputation of somewhat of a death trap and something you didn't want to fight (during the siege of Brakos the crew finally managed to move the ship and power the weapons long enough to single-handedly beat back a Dilgar fleet) before self-destructing to take down the final bombing ships available to the besieging Dilgar forces. Later ships of the class seem having worked out the various design flaws, turning them in the fleet-killing monsters they were supposed to be.

For anyone not thinking that the Centauri weapons pack that much power, I answer: look back the series and marvel at what happened every time the Centauri fought. Their ships had a serious glass chin, but a single _Demos_ (basically a _Vorchan_ replacing the twin arrays with heavy twin arrays and adding missiles) _obliterated_ a _G'Quan_ heavy cruiser with six well-placed shots in _In the Beginning_. The Centauri _have_ the power to take on anyone short of the Minbari, they just grew too decadent to actually use it.

Just to explain: the Vorlon_ think_ they are crystalline when they talk, but forget that most races (Minbari included) don't know them well enough, and having used telepathy for milennia most of them don't understand that part of the meaning of what they want to say is lost in vocalizing it (the translation is actually pretty accurate). The Shadows are better in this, both because they still use vocalized language and because they have the sense to have people who can understand their language talk for them (explaining in part their superior effectiveness in converting the Younger Races to their cause).

House Radda is the Centauri House that helped House Jaddo in finding Earth... And then signed its own death sentence by helping a group of Human separatists founding the Free Human Union without knowledge of the Centaurum and the emperor. When Earthgov and the Centaurum found out the House was purged and most of their assets were sold to pay reparations to Earth Alliance (an important trading partner for the Republic), and what remained of the House (namely a few older ships and six surveillance vessels with their crews and the son of the House Lord that destroyed the House) found sanctuary in the FHU.

The river mining is more important than it appears: a lot of trade passes through rivers, and mining one could disrupt communications for a time, as Nazi Germany learned the hard way (when the RAF started mining the rivers a lot of material had to pass on the already overtaxed roads and railways, precipitating the economic collapse and the Allies' victory).


	8. Discontinuation Notice

**Interruption Notice**

Dear readers, in a moment of thinking I realized that this is not my story, just my take on someone else's. I can't really continue this project, especially when I have my own stories to make. I apologize to those who followed me until now, and I hope that you'll read me again when I return writing on Babylon 5.

by lord Martiya

P.S.: Go and read _A Thin Veneer_. The author and me disagree on parts of the background and the technology interactions, but it's still a magnificent story.


End file.
